


"everything she did -

by Lyre (Lyrecho)



Category: AI: The Somnium Files (Video Game)
Genre: (some timeline and other things have been fudged for me to have a better sandbox to play around in), Boss-centric, Gen, Semi-Canon Compliant, other tags added as they apply, pre-game, slow updates will be slow, the six years!!!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-12
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:21:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21764452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyrecho/pseuds/Lyre
Summary: - she did for you."shizue kuranushi, through the years.|Tumblr||Twitter|
Relationships: Boss | Kuranushi Shizue & Date Kaname
Comments: 34
Kudos: 96





	"everything she did -

When contact is lost with Hayato, Shizue fears the worst.

Once she finds him again, she knows her fears weren’t unfounded.

It’s Saito Sejima’s body in front of her, but there’s none of Sejima in his face, in his posture. There’s none of Hayato, either - he looks younger, and less hardened. Vulnerable. Confused. Feral. Two dozen descriptions flit through her mind and none quite fit.

The rabid animal in his eye settles some as she speaks to him. Slowly. Calm.

_You know me?_

No. She doesn’t. Not really. Not anymore.

 _I know you_.

He takes her hand.

-x-

After taking Hayato into her protective custody, Shizue knows she’s got a list of things that absolutely need to be done and not a very large window of time to do them in.

She compartmentalises. _Stress later, Shizue_.

Hayato follows her to her apartment with a baffled sort of haze radiating around him, and a gentle, burgeoning trust begins to shine in his eye. It hurts, a bit, because Hayato with his memories had never been this unwary. He’s probably still as snarly as ever, under the shock, but there’s a sort of innocence to the way he looks at her - Hayato trusts her, she knows, but he’s never looked at her even once before without that slant to his gaze that tells her he’s calculating her every move, trying to figure out her angle.

Saito Sejima is almost - what, about a decade Hayato’s junior? It shows. His face is smooth, hairless, and Shizue doesn’t think it’s just from an incredibly close shave. If this body has ever had so much as even the shadow of a beard, she’ll eat a hat.

Sejima is twenty-four years old, if she remembers correctly. Just shy of his twenty-fifth birthday. He doesn’t look it - especially with the clothes he wears; he looks like he’d fit right in with a highschool crowd.

“We’re here,” she says, when they reach her building, and Hayato jolts when she speaks. She takes a moment to let him regain his composure - what little of it he has - and then leads him inside and to the stairs; the elevator doesn’t seem like a good idea right now, with him as jumpy as he is.

Hayato was already pretty prone to violence as a knee jerk reaction in his own body. Shizue has no idea what the physical memory of a serial killer’s body will do with that.

“Home sweet home,” she says, and waves Hayato into her apartment. He steps in slowly, and behind them, Shizue locks and bolts the door shut.

The bolt slides home with echoing finality. Shizue can feel Hayato’s eyes on her, questioning but not suspicious.

“So…” He begins as she turns back to face him, awkward in a way she hasn’t seen him be with her since they were both in their twenties. “You’re my...boss?”

“That’s right,” Shizue says, and it’s the truth, if not all of it. “I’m in command of a unit with the MPD; you’re one of my subordinates. You were on a mission undercover and, about a week ago, we lost contact with you completely. We’ve been scouring the city for you, but I have to say - of all the ways I was expecting to find you, _amnesiac_ wasn’t quite up there.” That part’s a lie, but she sells it well. She knows she does.

“I see,” Hayato says. Shizue’s expecting more questions, but instead he turns his head, and scans her admittedly bare bones living space - she’d long since moved most of her decorative pieces to her office. This apartment was just a place to crash in when she needed a break from being underground. “Is it okay if I sit?”

“It’s fine,” she says, and he lowers himself to her sofa, perching gingerly on the edge of the seat. “It won’t break, you know.”

“It’s white,” he says, like that explains anything, and that’s the moment where it clicks for Shizue that days wandering the streets are _days wandering the streets_ . She hadn’t really noticed before - too caught up in just finally _finding_ him - but, yeah. He could use a change of clothes. And a shower.

Her gaze rests on the hole where his left eye used to be. _And some medical attention._

“We’ll get you sorted,” she promises. “For now, have you eaten anything recently?”

Hayato blinks. “I don’t know,” he says. “Everything’s been hazy. Too much pain.”

 _Crk crk crk_ and her stove lights. She places the kettle on the flame and keeps her eyes away from Hayato as she moves through her kitchen, pulling out mugs and teabags. “I see,” she says quietly. “I’ve got some bureaucratic tape to cut through, now that I’ve found you,” she says, and behind her, the kettle shrills. She pours the water into the mugs, and colour blooms from the tea. Two sugars, and she leaves it to steep. “But I’ll try my best to get through it as quickly as possible. Once that’s done, we’ll get you to a hospital.”

Hayato nods, and she hands him his mug. He takes it carefully, and stares at it dubiously for a moment before raising it to his lips. Hers still feels scalding in her grip; if it’s too hot, he doesn’t say anything. Shizue wonders if he can feel anything beyond the pain his eye must be causing him - to say nothing of the lingering effects of a psync not done properly.

She takes the momentary silence to pull out her phone - she shoots a concise update on the situation to Pewter, and within ten minutes he’s texted her back a time for a meeting the higher ups are calling,

> i can’t exactly leave him alone in my apartment, and you can’t expect me to bring him into a meeting 
> 
> don’t be stupid, it doesn’t suit you  
> on such short notice, half the people coming to the meeting aren’t Coming To The Meeting
> 
> conference call?
> 
> conference call

Shizue looks up, and sees Hayato staring at her silently. “You good?”

His gaze isn’t on her, actually - it’s fixed on her phone. “Who are you talking to?”

“Another one of our coworkers,” she says. “I’m letting him know I’ve found you. We’ve all been worried.”

A flicker of doubt crosses Hayato’s face - at least, that’s what she _thinks_ it is; she’s good at reading people, but she doesn’t know what means what for Sejima as well as she did Hayato’s original body - but he settles back easily enough, some intensity leaving his gaze.

“Do you have...any idea what’s happened to me?”

A pause. “No,” she says finally. “Until we get you a full medical, too, I doubt we’ll have any clues to go forward with, either.” She sighs, heavy and tired. Hayato’s eye narrows before his expression clears, and he sips at his tea once more.

“When do you think we’ll be able to do that?”

“Soon,” she promises. “Our coworker - the one I was just talking to - is handling informing the higher ups that you’re alive. Once you’ve showered, we can get going. I probably have clothes here _somewhere_ that will fit you.” If she doesn’t, Pewter will be able to take care of it; the trip from the station to her apartment isn’t _that_ far.

Hayato nods, just once, and with a soft _chink_ places his empty mug down on her coffee table. He looks for a coaster, first, which is adorable - Shizue shrugs and tells him not to bother; she doesn’t really care about the state of her furniture.

She gets up to go digging for some clothes - finds some old uniforms stashed away in a cupboard; not Hayato’s - not anyone’s, she thinks, since they’re still wrapped in plastic and folded with clean lines only machines can produce. Does she remember why she has them? No. It doesn’t matter. 

The first one she grabs is in Hayato’s original size, and she has to take a moment to breathe through the shock of tears that burn in the corners of her eyes. She blinks them away, places the packaged uniform down, and hunts through the pile for one that looks like it would fit the body of Saito Sejima better.

Hayato thanks her quietly when she hands it to him and directs him to the bathroom. The water pressure builds in the pipes - she can hear it in the walls - and then the rush of water from the showerhead echoes all throughout her apartment.

> how are we for time?
> 
> ready to go whenever you are
> 
> i can’t exactly speak, pewter
> 
> don’t worry. I will speak for you.  
> simply text me what it is you want me to say
> 
> right

She digs in her pocket for headphones she never uses, and slots them into her phone. Two taps, and she’s connected to the call Pewter has going.

“Is that Kuranushi?” A voice she doesn’t recognise, but when it comes to higher command, that isn’t saying much. Shizue wouldn’t be surprised if there are government representatives in on this call, too.

“It is,” Pewter replies. “As she has the subject in question in her vicinity - and I believe none of us want him overhearing this - she will be a silent observer in this call. Should she have points to raise, or should you have questions you wish for her to answer, I will act as her mouthpiece.”

“Acceptable,” says the voice. “Well, Kuranushi? The floor is yours.”

“As you know,” begins Pewter, “for some time now, we have been working on the Cylcops Killings case - specifically, working the angle that the Kumakura group has some involvement in it. With the help of a new operative, we managed to confirm this.”

“Did you, now.”

“Yes.”

A different voice speaks up. “Well, something clearly went wrong,” she says. “Care to elaborate on that?”

“The killer, unfortunately, managed to get one step ahead of us,” Pewter says, and Shizue can hear the bitterness that echoes in his tone, even if no one else in the call would be able to pick up on it. “You are all aware, I am supposing, of the prototype psync machine that was stolen en route?”

“From an armed guard,” one voice says dryly - Shizue is going to have to get a transcript of this meeting from Pewter later, just to put names to words and opinions. “Yes, we are aware.”

“It appears that the killer was either involved with the theft, or had access to it once it was stolen, and discovered enough to have at least a rudimentary idea of how it works. He overwhelmed our operative, and used the psync machine to...trade bodies with him.”

“Ah, yes. _That_ feature.”

“What happened to your operative?”

“We lost contact, for about a week,” Pewter says. “Commander Kuranushi encountered him an hour or so ago, disoriented and amnesiac.”

The sound of paper being shuffled through. “That’s a projected side effect to a poorly done psync, no? I’m afraid I’m not quite fluent on scientific jargon.”

Pewter forces out a somewhat nervous laugh. “Psyncing is a dangerous art,” he says plainly. “If you don’t know what you are doing when you hook up psyncer and dreamer, what you are doing when you explore the somnium...irreparable damage can be done. To say nothing of what could be done if either dreamer or psyncer is improperly disconnected from the psync without warning. The body swap would happen if you go over the time limit regardless, of course - even in a properly done psync. However...our operative’s specific side effects speak to me of an amatuer poking at things he did _not_ understand.”

“A shame,” a voice states mildly. “Tell us, then: your operative is now, currently, in the body of the Cyclops Killer?”

“In one half of the serial killing unit, yes,” Pewter says, and hesitates a second before continuing, “Saito Sejima.”

The call was already pretty quiet - neat and orderly, unlike the meetings Shizue has with Pewter face-to-face; the higher ups aren’t fond of nonsense - but once _Sejima_ leaves Pewter’s lips, it’s pure silence that rings out.

“I’m sorry,” says the first voice that spoke, “but did you say _Sejima?_ ”

 _“Saito_ Sejima,” another voice says. “Congressman Sejima’s son?”

“Ah - that is to say…” Shizue can hear Pewter swallow, dry and nervous. “Yes?”

Silence, once more - and then a deep, exhausted sigh.

“Of course,” the first voice says. “Of course.”

“We have the situation. What are we doing about it?”

“Kuranushi? Your opinions?”

Pewter is silent, this time. Before, he could speak for Shizue easily enough - it was just cold, hard facts. But now, this time, this requires her actual thoughts. Her fingers fly across her phone’s screen as she types faster than she thinks she ever has before.

“We already have one half of the killer in custody,” Pewter reads out, “if not in his original body. Given the damage done to our operative from the psync failure backlash, I can’t imagine Sejima is doing much better in his new body, either. I’m of the mind that we pin the murders on the killer in our custody, and retrain our operative as a psyncer, while keeping an eye out for Sejima resurfacing.”

An incredulous laugh. “Your idea is to let two killers walk free, while taking the only one of them we have in our custody - possibly the _least_ important of the three - as the sole incarceration? Need I remind this council that the ‘operative’ in question is the assassin Falco? His hands are just as bloody as Sejima’s, if not _more_ so.”

Shizue’s instinctive responses are vast and varying - _he’s a good guy, really; he doesn’t remember doing that, though; he’s my friend he’s my family I won’t let you take him from me when I just got him back_ \- 

\- she breathes deep, because she knows no amount of emotion will help this situation. Keep it to logic, Shizue. Keep it to cold, hard facts.

“The body Sejima currently resides in is that of Rohan Kumakura,” Pewter says, her words, his voice; slightly shaky, but ringing with truth. “He is a high profile criminal; easy to keep an eye on, and easy to take into custody with just one slip up - if he is even left sane after the fallout of a failed sync. You’ve all read the reports, I am sure. You know what that would have done to him. He is a low priority concern.”

“Let’s say we grant you that much,” a voice says. “What of your operative? What of Falco?”

“He shows a certain trust in me, even after not remembering me at all,” Pewter says. “He followed me willingly to my apartment, and has obeyed every command I’ve given to him. He has not attempted to make any violent moves.” Pewter pauses, and the next words that fall out are not Shizue’s, but his own. “He has an aptitude for psyncing I have seen in no other, and unlike other members of ABIS who have used the machine, he had undergone _no_ training but the brief I gave him before we hooked him up - a mere ten or so minutes. Admittedly, the purpose of putting him under a psync was to have him trade bodies with Rohan Kumakura, not to have him investigate the depths of his somnium, but he connected with no difficulties, and expressed none of the usual discomfort common with psyncing. His ego is very unique - ” A cough, and Pewter breaks off, clearing his throat. “ - right,” he says. “Sorry. What I am getting at is this: if this government truly intends to go forward with ABIS as a cornerstone of CSI, giving up on ‘Falco’ as an operative will be a dreadful mistake.”

A thoughtful hum. “He makes good points.”

“Good points are only valid if they have solid practice backing up the theory,” another voice interjects. “Are you sure you can control him?”

“He’s amnesiac,” Shizue says, speaking through Pewter, who pauses when he gets to the next sentence in her message. She sends it through again, in all caps. “It will be like molding a clay doll.”

The conversation - debate, really - continues on for a while after that, but Shizue knows she’s already won. Within five minutes, they’ve signed off on pinning the killings on Rohan - _#89_ , they call him, because Rohan’s face is well known, and Hayato’s isn’t it - and on sealing the records; both public and private. A small task force is dedicated to keeping an eye on the remaining Kumakuras, and Hayato is handed over to Shizue’s custody and discretion with the full legality she can be granted.

“Thank you,” Pewter says, and the first voice snorts.

“Don’t thank us,” he says bluntly. “This is us fixing your own fuck ups. Do your jobs properly, and we’ll hopefully have no need to ever speak again.” He disconnects, and then it’s just her and Pewter, left sitting in silence.

The shower is still running in her bathroom. Vaguely, she wonders if Hayato is going to use all of her hot water.

Pewter lets out a shaky breath. “That went better than I was expecting it to,” he says, frank as ever.

“It went about as well as I _was_ ,” Shizue says. “He’s right; this was a giant fucking mess. They want this swept under the rug as much as we do. If it weren’t for the fact that we’re ABIS - ”

“We’d be heavily reprimanded?”

“And don’t you forget it.” She sighs, and settles deeper into her seat, feeling the tension in her shoulders begin to slowly bleed away. “We’re going to have to think of a name for him.”

“Hmm? He can’t just use his own?”

“Of course not, don’t be stupid,” she snaps. “Maybe #89’s records are being sealed, but Hayato Yagyu’s can’t be, not without raising suspicion. What happens if we give him that name and he goes looking for some more information on himself, hmm? What do we say when his face and age don’t match?”

“Okay, okay, I get your point, Boss,” Pewter sighs. “We’ll think of something - ”

The apartment goes silent; in the bathroom, Hayato’s turned the shower off.

“We always do,” Shizue agrees. “Get medical ready - we’re coming to you.”

-x-

If getting Hayato into her apartment was an exercise in coaxing a jumpy, feral cat to sit quietly on her lap, getting him back out of it again is like trying to fling that self same cat into a bath.

“You _need_ medical attention,” Shizue reminds him, standing in the elevator with her arms crossed over her chest while Hayato sulks next to her. He’s practically pouting. It works on Sejima’s face disturbingly well - this is the kind of man women will fall for at a glance. She can see how he managed to lure his victims, and she hates it.

Hayato has never been an unhandsome man, but there was a roughness to him, something flawed and real. Something human. Saito Sejima’s delicate features are beautiful, and feel unnatural for it. Shizue’s almost thankful for the sunken lid that hides his missing eye; a glimpse of the macabre marring that perfect face.

“You’re staring,” he says, quiet, and Shizue - she doesn’t _jump_ , but she lets out a little twitch.

“You’re injured,” she shoots back. “I’m trying to decide if you’re going to collapse on me.”

Hayato rolls his eye, then winces and grabs at his head.

“I want the good painkillers,” he groans, and Shizue has to let out a little laugh.

“I’ll do my best,” she promises.

The elevator _dings!_ that they’ve arrived at the ground floor, and Shizue steps out first. Hayato follows her, slower - less from caution this time; more pain. She risks placing a gentle hand on his arm, and when he doesn’t flinch or shrug her off, leads him carefully to her car. He all but collapses in her passenger seat, and curls up after strapping himself in, as if to hide his gaze from the light.

She slips into the driver’s seat soundlessly, and drives fast - she makes it to the station in what she thinks is a new record, for her. Nice.

“We’re here,” she says, when Hayato shows no signs of getting out - like he hasn’t even realised the car has stopped moving. He blinks up at her when she speaks, and his vision is unfocused and clouded with pain.

She sighs. “Come on, I’ll help you.”

It’s not as easy as it would be if Hayato was still in his own body - Sejima is taller, if slighter - but she has to admit, either way, it still wouldn’t exactly be _easy_ for her to lug around a man both taller and heavier than _her_.

Which is why, as soon as she can - as soon as she spots him - she basically throws Hayato at Pewter.

Both her boys yelp - Pewter’s somewhere between surprise and fear, and Hayato’s a mix of shock and pain that does succeed in making her feel a _little_ guilty.

“Sorry,” she apologises, and steps forward to help right them both - she slips under one of Hayato’s arms easily, and gestures for Pewter to do the same.

He sighs, grumbling, but complies. Through the corner of her eyes, Shizue sees him direct a bleary one-eyed glare at Pewter, some of that wild animal coming back into him with tension. He’s been tense since she shoved him into the elevator, though - not wanting him to try and make a break for it on the stairs if his nerves got the better of him - so she doesn’t think too much on it.

“This is Pewter,” she introduces. “He handles the tech side of things around here. He’s the coworker I was telling you about.”

Something in Hayato relaxes when she reassures him that Pewter isn’t someone _completely_ unknown to him, technically, and his tight grip on her arm loosens. Blood immediately rushes to the surface where his fingers had crushed down, and she breathes through the automatic sting with a smile. “Were you coming to collect us, Pewter?”

“I was,” he says. “I had thought you might require some assistance, but…” he trails off, shooting a nervous look at where Hayato’s head lolls against his shoulder, “perhaps not quite this much,” he finishes quietly.

Shizue snorts, because Pewter expecting any part of this to be nice, simple and easy is just about the funniest thing she’s heard all week, and then the rest of their trip into the depths of the MPD is spent in silence. Hayato doesn’t grumble even once about being shoved into another elevator, which is when the first stirrings of worry begin to stir inside of her once more.

 _He’s out of it because of the pain_ , she tells herself. _He’s probably been in shock and running on adrenaline, not to mention starving. You got him warm and clean and gave him tea. His body is letting him know something is very wrong now by making him_ truly _feel the pain it’s in for the first time._

That doesn’t make it easier to stomach. That doesn’t mean the low, wounded sounds Hayato makes when they jostle him in _just_ the wrong way don’t shoot straight through her heart.

“We’re here,” Pewter announces, and reaches forward to punch in his access codes. He tilts his body so that Hayato can’t get a glimpse of the exact numbers, but Shizue sincerely doesn’t think it matters - Hayato is, mentally, existing in a different reality to them right now.

The doors slide open, and paramedics are waiting - ABIS employed, chained by however many thousands of NDAs the government made them sign before they ever got anywhere near HQ, Shizue knows they’re safe to hand Hayato over to. It’s still hard, though - she just got him back, after years of near silence, only to lose him so totally and completely; having him out of her immediate grasp makes her heart beat faster than it should be, considering she’s just standing still.

Pewter watches her with a careful, narrow gaze. “Maybe,” he starts casually, “you should think about seeing a counselor of your own, after all this? ABIS approved, of course.” He pauses. “They’ll be getting one for him, too.”

Shizue pauses - she’d been about to roll her eyes at Pewter’s suggestion, she doesn’t _need_ a therapist, she’s _fine_ \- when the second half of his statement catches her off guard. Hayato getting counselling isn’t surprising - at least for his amnesia, if nothing else, he needs medical care. ABIS approved because the side effects of a psync gone wrong can be _hell_ , and he needs help with that, too.

Him getting a counselor is obvious, which means - Pewter bringing it up is in connection to an issue that _isn’t_ obvious.

She narrows her eyes at him. “What?”

He fidgets under her stare, but eventually sighs and, avoiding meeting her eyes with his own, pulls out his tablet and thumbs it to life. He taps at it a few times, and a buzz and accompanying _beep beep_ from Shizue’s pocket tells her that he’s just sent _something_ to her phone. She pulls it out, and navigates to her inbox, pulling up the rather hefty file Pewter’s attached to the wordless and subjectless missive.

“What is this?”

“Well, the medics needed some medical background, obviously,” Pewter says, and sniffs. “Falco’s file will go to whatever counselor he’s given, but what was needed here isn’t any sort of mental record - they just wanted to know the basic things, like allergies and what vaccinations Saito Sejima’s had.”

Shizue skim reads as much of the file as she can, but medical jargon isn’t exactly her strong point - “Hurry up and get to whatever point you’re leading me to, Pewter.”

He adjusts his visor - a nervous tick. “However, when they tried to access Saito Sejima’s medical records, they discovered...that they were sealed.”

Shizue pauses. “That’s not normal?” She guesses, and Pewter confirms her supposition with a head shake. 

“It isn’t,” he says. “Not even for a politician’s son - at least, not to this extent.”

“But you managed to get it.”

“I did,” Pewter agrees, some of his pep springing back in. “My genius, combined with the weight of ABIS? Truly, there is nothing that cannot be achieved by that combination.” The grin on his face slackens, however, when his gaze flickers back to her phone; specifically, at the file she’s still scrolling through. “Page fifteen,” he says quietly, and Shizue jumps to the mentioned page without question.

There, she sees a sentence that gives her pause. “Oxytocin?” She asks. It sounds familiar, but she’s not sure exactly what it is.

“Colloquially referred to as the ‘love hormone,’” Pewter says, still in that same soft, quiet tone, “it is the chemical core of what makes up many positive human emotions - affection, love, you name it.”

A shudder of ice slicks down Shizue’s throat to her spine like oil. “He’s - he’s in a - a _psychopath’s_ body?”

Looking uncomfortable and uncomfortably pitying, Pewter shrugs. “That’s going to be a fun case to make to the higher ups,” he mutters, but Shizue hears him as if through glass. She can’t even begin to begin caring about what the higher ups will make of this.

Hayato is in a body that doesn’t know how to feel love. He’s in the body he’s always tried to make his own into.

She chokes out a near hysterical laugh, and forces her numb fingers to move. She shuts down the app, and then her phone. “You have a solution, right? Please tell me you have a solution.”

Something like reassurance enters Pewter’s expression, and he nods at her. His smile is tight, closer to a grimace than a true smile, but it’s there. “Normal medicine probably couldn’t accomplish what we’re going to do on quite the same scale,” he admits, “but here at ABIS, we know more about the human brain and how it functions than almost anywhere else in the world. There are plenty of treatments out there to help with chemical and hormonal imbalances - this will be just the same, if with a different hormone than the usual.”

“That can’t last forever, though,” she says. “There has to be a more permanent solution.”

Pewter sighs. “I’ve already started tossing around ideas for one,” he tells her. “When I’ve got a more solid base theory, I’ll start working on some prototypes. Until then - we’ll just tell him whatever treatments he has to take are for his eye and his memory.”

Shizue sighs. She doesn’t like it, but she’s too dazed to protest, and lying to Hayato about the drugs he’s going to be taking is still a better option than letting him be a _psychopath_. She’s amazed he followed her at all, now - she was already wondering at it, but now it just feels like a miracle. 

“Onto other pressing matters,” Pewter says, “have we figured out a name for him?”

Shizue sighs. “I’ve had an idea,” she admits. “Come with me to my office, we can get his ID set up while we wait for them to be done.”

-x-

 _Kaname Date,_ printed on page in neat, uniform letters, with Saito Sejima’s face in the corner. It’s actually _his_ face, too - they’re not going to be able to get a photo of Hayato - _Kaname Date_ \- until long after he’s released from his surgery, and so Pewter had gone digging for a fairly recent picture of Saito, from before the body swap.

He’s unsmiling, wearing the same choker she’d found Hayato - Date - wearing. She kind of hates it, but she understands necessity. She shoves her vitriol down.

“How’s he doing?”

“Stable,” Pewter replies. “Remarkably so, apparently, considering it looks like Saito Sejima literally _ripped_ the eye out. No anesthesia, no disinfectant, no surgical tools. He just...grabbed and pulled.” He grimaces, looking faintly queasy. Shizue feels her own lips curl up in distaste.

“Is the damage serious, do you think?”

Pewter shrugs helplessly. “Once they’re done with the actual surgery, we’ll be able to judge that better - as far as I understand, it’s reconstructive, mostly, but they were tossing around ideas that the entire optic nerve - or at least what’s _left_ of it - might have to be removed and replaced with an artificial one. That, at least, would make it easier for him to connect a prosthetic eye at a later date.” He sighs. “It is, in a manner of speaking, damage done almost directly to Date’s brain. The connection between the optic nerve and - ”

“Okay, enough,” Shizue interjects. God, she’s tired. Hearing how easily Pewter refers to him as Date isn’t helping, either, considering how her own thoughts keep tripping her up over _Hayato_.

 _Pewter didn’t know him before, not really,_ her thoughts whisper. _You did. Remember that_ awful _ponytail he had back in the Academy? He actually thought it was_ cool, _can you believe that?_

A smile, soft and bittersweet, erases some of the exhaustion weighing her down. “What else have you got for me?”

“Good news,” Pewter reassures. “Firstly, the oxytocin supplement seems like it will work, if not forever - he showed no negative reactions to it.”

“Oh, thank god,” Shizue breathes out. “That is, quite literally, the best thing I’ve heard all day. What else?”

“We’ve started work on scrubbing every image of Saito Sejima in existence out of existence,” Pewter says plainly. “Thankfully, he’s apparently always been a bit of a recluse - no university records to speak of, and if he ever had friends in highschool, he hasn’t kept up with them. His social media presence is basically nonexistent - the photo you’ve used in Date’s ID? Almost two years old.” 

Shizue frowns down at said ID. “He doesn’t really look much older.”

“He ages well,” Pewter agrees. “Regardless - the one snag we could possibly run into in the process of having Saito Sejima’s face becoming known as Kaname Date’s, and _only_ Kaname Date’s…” He trails off, but he doesn’t need to continue. Shizue can tell what he’s building up to, and it’s the same line of dread that’s been slowly steeping in the back of her mind since Pewter had confessed that no, medical records aren’t usually _that_ secure.

“Congressman Sejima,” she murmurs, and Pewter inclines his head.

“Indeed,” he says. “He has yet to put out a missing person’s report for his son - but given how tightly Saito’s records were sealed, there’s probably a good reason for that.”

“He knows about Saito’s condition,” Shizue states, absolutely certain. “And now that Saito’s gone off the map - he’s worried his son has finally gone off the rails, and is trying to distance himself from the fallout.”

Pewter nods. “If nothing else, it’s certainly leverage,” he says. “He’s a powerful man, after all, and if, for whatever reason, he decides to be a thorn in ABIS’ side, he’ll make himself a _deadly_ one. All it would take is one court ordered DNA test to throw ‘Kaname Date’ out the window, of course, and I doubt the higher ups would be willing to expose ABIS to the general judicial system for the sake of one problem operative.”

Shizue sighs. “You’re not wrong,” she admits. “But somehow, I don’t see So being a problem.” A quick search online reveals the Congressman’s very publicly available address, and she has to let out a whistle as she types it into her GPS. “Fancy,” she remarks.

Pewter startles when she swings her legs down from her desk and stands. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to go make sure this snag you’re worried about never catches our net,” she says. “You keep doing what you’ve been doing - and keep me updated on Date’s condition.”

Something mulish crosses Pewter’s face, but he sits back down with a grumbling sigh and a roll of his eyes. “ _Fine,”_ he says. 

Shizue smiles. “Good boy,” she coos, and blows him a kiss over her shoulder as she leaves the room. The disgusted face he makes at her for it has her laughing all the way up to her car - throughout the entire long elevator ride, and the walk to the garage.

She’s calmed down once she’s on the road, though - she can feel the gravity of the situation settle on her. She maintains her cool.

She hadn’t been lying when she’d told Pewter she couldn’t see So being a problem - if anything, he’d probably be glad to be rid of his son. Shizue knows that, in his place, _she_ would be. Still, though...the Congressman is a _powerful_ man, and she doesn’t really want to risk bringing his ire onto ABIS _too_ much.

The drive is a decently long one, and even though she’s not really _tired_ , per se, she’s yawning wide enough that her jaw cracks when she pulls into the drive. Armed guards eye her as she steps out of her car, and with a flourish, she slams her door shut and eyes them right back.

She steps up to the gate, and pauses in front of the camera. She flashes her badge. “Captain Kuranushi,” she introduces herself. “I have some news to deliver to Congressman Sejima.”

Crackling comes from the speaker, and then, static choked but still clear enough to hear - _“Congressman Sejima is currently unavailable, ma’am. If you would like to leave your number or a message - ”_

“I am sure he will want to see me,” Shizue interjects, a placid smile on her face. “This is rather urgent - it concerns his son, you see.”

Silence. And then -

_“The Congressman will see you now, ma’am.”_

With a creak the gates slowly open, and Shizue waves at the camera. “Thank you,” she says, and steps into the grounds.

Standing on a small wooden footbridge over gently trickling water is a face that Shizue knows well - “Congressman,” she greets, and is greeted in return by a grunt from the man who flicks his gaze up and down her in the quickest thorough once over Shizue’s ever been subjected to. She doesn’t know if she should act offended or not - she decides on _not;_ it clearly hadn’t been sexual, and he’d probably take it as an insult if she tried to dumb herself down for a base attempt at leverage.

“Kuranushi, was it? What’s my useless boy done now, hmm?”

“Murder, sir,” Shizue says easily, tone pleasant. “Multiple counts. But that’s not quite what I’m here for.”

Briefly, minutely, Sejima’s shoulders tense. Shizue bites down the smirk that crawls onto her face - she can’t help the smug feeling, though; like a cat that got both the cream _and_ the canary.

“Oh?” Sejima says, and his face is a mask arranged in perfect neutrality. It’s easy to see how he’s succeeded so long as a politician. “Care to explain just what _exactly_ you mean, Captain Kuranushi?”

“I’ll speak bluntly,” she tells him, “but first, I’m going to need you to read through and sign these.” Sejima’s brows shoot for his hairline when she pulls out a thick stack of NDAs from her bag, but he takes them without protest, and for a few minutes, they stand in silence as he reads through each form.

Eventually, he grunts. “What can you tell me without me signing these?”

“Next to nothing, sir.”

He nods, and sighs. “Got a pen?” 

She does. She brought it with her for just this reason - she hands it to him, and with the quick, practiced strokes of someone who’s spent decades of their life doing endless paperwork, he’s signing each dotted line. 

“You know,” he says conversationally, “usually, a lawyer would need to witness a signing like this for it to be binding.”

Shizue shrugs. “True,” she concedes, “and if you’re that pressed about the full legal process, I can take you down with me to the station right now.” She pauses. “Somehow, though, I think you just want to get this over and done with, so you can move on faster.” She doesn’t mean that in the sentimental way - she’s now one-hundred percent certain he doesn’t love his son; he’d shown no concern at all when questioning just what it is Saito had done to bring a cop knocking, and he’d shown no surprise or denial when she’d answered _murder._

“Well, I suppose you’d be right there,” he says, and signs off on the last page with a flourish. He hands the papers back to her, and she flicks through them quickly - just a quick, cursory check to make sure he has, indeed, signed in each required space.

He has, and so Shizue nods, and begins to speak frankly. “What do you know of ABIS?”

“I know it exists,” Sejima says. “Pardon me, but what does this have to do with my son?”

“Saito Sejima is one half of the serial killing pair known to the media and public as the Cyclops Killer,” she says bluntly. “We had an operative in place to bring him into custody, but some complications arose. You say you know of ABIS - what do you know of its purpose, its function? The possible side effects?”

Sejima narrows his eyes. “Next to nothing,” he says. “I suppose that information in particular is why I had to sign the NDAs? Serial killer or no, I can’t imagine my son warrants such high security.”

 _The effort you put into sealing his medical history would belie that,_ Shizue thinks, but doesn’t say. Out loud, she opts for, “you’re close, sir.”

He gestures for her to go on, and so she does - “The primary function of ABIS is to ‘psync’ into the minds of criminals, victims and key witnesses that either can’t, or won’t, speak to the police. There are multiple possible side effects, but perhaps the most dangerous is the chance of the psyncing officer and the dreamer...trading bodies.”

Understanding lights up in Sejima’s eyes. “And that’s what’s happened here, hmm? One of your operatives tried ‘psyncing’ with my son, and now he’s in his body?” He tilts his head. “Why not just employ the same methods to switch them back?”

“Impossible,” she dismisses, “apologies, sir, but that’s need to know information, and you _don’t_ need to know.” She taps the forms she holds. “The NDAs don’t cover it.”

“I suppose you want something from me, then?”

“Other ABIS agents are scrubbing your son’s history on this earth clean as we speak,” she says. “By the end of the week, no matter how thoroughly one searches, they’ll find no trace of ‘Saito Sejima’ beyond the fact that he exists. We’d like for you to cooperate with us on this - spread rumours that he’s gone on an overseas journey to ‘find himself,’ or something similar - and destroy any and all photographs you have containing him.”

“And what do I get out of this, Captain?”

“You get to avoid the Sejima name being immersed in a scandal I’m not sure even _you_ could bounce back from, Congressman, sir.” Saccharine, Shizue smiles. “It’s a win-win for everyone involved if you just go along with this, in my opinion.”

He regards her for a long, silent moment. “You are not wrong,” he allows. “I will comply, and leave my son in your care.” He doesn’t specify if he means Saito’s body, or Saito’s mind in whatever body it’s found itself in. Shizue doesn’t ask for clarification - merely ducks into a shallow bow, for the sake of politeness, before taking her leave.

She slides into her car and reverses out of the Sejima estate with nothing but relief coursing through her veins; checks her phone to see several update messages from Pewter. She’d had her phone on silent while meeting with Sejima, of course, but set to ring if Pewter had sent her anything on the _hey this is actually very urgent line_ . Thankfully, none of that - _Date has come out of surgery, he’s sleeping off the drugs in recovery_ and _I’ve taken his measurements in order to procure him proper garments._

> nothing crazy, okay?
> 
> oh ye of little faith. he now has a face that lends itself to fashion - he should make good use of it!

Nausea swells in the back of her throat.

> just - normal clothes for now, okay? if he wants your help later, he can ASK

She throws her phone down in her passenger seat and breathes through her teeth. Her grip on the steering wheel is tight enough that underneath her fingers, the rubber creaks; she tells herself to cool it, over and over, like a mantra.

She doesn’t really like driving in silence, especially on longer trips, but that’s almost twice in one day she’s done so - she doesn’t know if it’s the stress or what, but her brain is being too loud and cruel to her, so she doesn’t want to _think_ anymore. She flicks the radio on - just some mindless Top 40s pop station having an ad-free hour - and settles back into her seat, trying to relax as much as possible. Eventually, she gets her fingers to loosen up, and heat rushes through them as blood is allowed to flow to the tips once more.

“You’re an idiot, Shizue,” she mutters to herself, and makes the turnoff that will lead her back to the station. The rest of the drive through the city isn’t exactly pleasant, but it’s uneventful, which is about all she can ask for at this point, really.

Her trip back down to her office is accompanied by her maudlin mood, and not even the colour and decorations she’s scattered all around her space can bring her cheer back up to its usual levels.

“The Congressman get you down _that_ much?” Pewter asks, and she narrows her glare at him.

“Why are you still in my office?” She wonders. “Don’t you have - I don’t know - a _lab_ of your own?”

“You see, Boss, if I work in my lab, people think I’m actually _available_ to be doing work. While I’m in here, no one will bother me, which is what I need to be focusing on the task _you_ assigned me.”

Shizue’s briefly brought up short by his short tone - before it hits her that she hadn’t exactly been any nicer to him, and she forces her hackles down. “Sorry,” she says quietly, and after a moment Pewter sighs.

“Forgiven,” he says. “I know he was - important to you.”

“Like family,” she agrees. 

“Even after...everything? All he’s done?”

“Even now,” she affirms. “And he always will be.”

Pewter watches her with his head cocked to the side. “That’s something I never would have expected from you,” he says. “Sentimentality.”

Shizue blinks. “Uh - are we sitting in the same room?” She asks, and gestures around her. “Have you _seen_ how I decorate my office?”

“That’s not sentimentality,” Pewter objects, “that’s a mix of your sheer laziness and your bizarre desire to be seen as far more mysterious than you actually are.”

She’d deny it if she was asked, but Shizue feels a little called out by that. “You don’t think I’m mysterious?”

“I think there’s plenty _about_ you that you keep a mystery,” he says. “But you are, on the whole, one of the most open books I’ve ever read.”

“I...don’t know how to feel about that,” Shizue admits, “so I’m just not going to think about it.”

Pewter snorts. “Sounds like you.”

She scowls at him, but moves on. “How did it go? Getting the clothes, I mean.”

Pewter gestures at her desk, and Shizue leans over it see, placed on the chair she never uses, a neat, square package.

“Ordered it in express,” Pewter says. “Don’t worry, I got him _boring_ clothes, just like you wanted. Some shirts, a jacket, some trousers.” He shrugs. “He’ll still be able to work blacks, so I mostly stuck to that, but I’m not sure how well red would work for him as an accent now - so I decided to shift it to cooler colours; some blues, some purples.”

“I only understood about half of that,” Shizue says, and reaches for her pen holder - specifically, the box cutter she keeps stored in it. One cut, two, and the package falls open. She pulls out the clothing folded within, and shakes it out to see that Pewter is, in fact, telling the truth; this is something she could see regular people wearing out on the street everyday. “Good work,” she tells him, and rewards him with a smile.

He rolls his eyes, trying to act as if he’s unaffected, but she can see the smile tugging at the corners of his lips, the faint blush dusting his cheeks. He’s pleased to be acknowledged, the dork.

“Well, we’re ready,” she says. “All that’s left now is to wait for him to wake up.”

“It _is_ the worst part of any operation, isn’t it?” Pewter says. “‘Hurry up and wait.’”

“It definitely is, for me. I have zero patience.” Shizue stretches, and feels her spine crack. “Any updates on how long, exactly, this waiting will take?”

“It was a voluntary sedation, not any sort of coma caused by injury or trauma, so by the time the drug is out of his system, he should be good to go,” Pewter says. “Sometime tomorrow afternoon, most likely.”

“Great,” Shizue says, and something in her tone must give Pewter pause, because he leans forward in his seat to scrutinise her.

“Are you well, Boss?”

“I’m tired,” she says, plain and honest. “But I don’t think I can just go home and sleep - not now.”

“Then stay here, and do just that,” Pewter says. “I’m sure amidst this mess here you have...blankets, or something.”

She feels her lips twitch, but she doesn’t laugh - not when Pewter is trying to be genuinely helpful, not when he’s _right_ . “I’ll try,” she says, because she really _should_ sleep. “Thanks, Pewter.”

He shrugs and avoids her gaze, cheeks flaring bright red over his high collar. “Anytime, Boss,” he says.

-x-

Hayato - _Date_ , goddammit, get it _through your head, Shizue_ \- peers around her office with all the baffled wonder of a man who has no memories of what proper interior design is, but somehow _knows_ that this? This isn’t it. 

She’s kind of proud of that, actually.

She leads him into her office proper, and he steps in with wary, cautious steps - like he’s stepping into the lion’s den, like he’s expecting the walls to jump out and bite him.

“Take a seat,” she says, and takes her regular perch on the edge of her desk. “How have you been, Date?”

He sits awkwardly, and shrugs. “I’ve been okay,” he says. “That’s - that’s my name? Date?”

“Yes and no,” Shizue says. “Have you - recovered any of your memories?”

The slight downcurl to his lips tells her all she needs to know before he shakes his head. “No,” he mutters, and she nods.

“Okay,” she says, and settles in to tell the lie that had been decided on and fleshed out to perfection. “Let me give you a brief rundown: you, Kaname Date, are a Special Agent in the employ of a secret task force known as ABIS, and a little over a week ago, in the middle of a covert op, your cover was somehow blown. We lost contact with you until I encountered you on the street, amnesiac and wounded.” She swallows, throat tight. “We don’t actually know what happened to you, in that week of radio silence before we found you again.” That much, at least, is true. “It must have something to do with your cover being blown...so…” She trails off, but even without his memories, Date is bright.

“So, you’re giving me a new name - because you think if the guys that did this to me found out I was still alive, or made my way back to the MPD, that they’d come after me again.” He raises a brow at her. “Am I right?”

Shizue nods, just once. “Essentially,” she agrees.

“Is there any reason why you can’t just tell _me_ my original name, then?”

 _Because it leads to an identity that isn’t yours, not anymore. That_ can’t _be yours._

“Doctor’s orders,” she says, a blatant lie, though if Date is curious enough to _ask_ his counselor, he will back Shizue up, “it’s better if you remember in your own time.”

Dejection flares to life in his eyes, but it’s quickly snuffed out by something else - a smile.

Shizue almost, _almost_ recoils from it. Saito Sejima’s face is already foreign enough to give her goosebumps, but Saito Sejima’s face _smiling?_ Unnatural, and unnaturally terrifying, irregardless of how beautiful it is.

Even so, in the single eye he has, fixed on her - a different shape, a different colour, a different face, a different name; it’s Hayato that shines through, and so long as she just focuses on that eye, she can keep her own smile up, too.

“Alright, Boss,” he says, and his voice is as soft as the rest of him would suggest. It’s _such_ an unassuming body.

“Pewter has your ID,” she tells him. “And some forms for you to sign, updated papers...you get the picture, I’m sure.”

Date pulls a sour expression that tells her, even with amnesia, one never forgets the mind numbing blergh of paperwork.

“The quicker you go get started, the quicker you’re done,” she reminds him, and he nods, with that little flicker to his expression she’s starting to believe is the closest he’ll come to rolling his eye, right now - clearly, he still remembers the pain doing so had caused him in the elevator, not even a week earlier.

“I don’t even know where Pewter’s lab _is_ ,” he complains - under his breath, muttered to himself, but Shizue hears him anyway.

“I’ll take you,” she offers. “I need to talk to him about something, anyway.” She doesn’t, not really - at least, not urgently; she sort of _always_ has one thing or another she really should talk to Pewter about - but a sort of panic had come into Date’s eyes when she’d made the offer, and while she didn’t know the cause, exactly, she knew - had known - Hayato well enough to know how to circumvent the issue.

Their walk down to Pewter’s lair is a silent one, but a pleasant one. There’s a lot between them - and in their lives in general - that weighs heavy on their shoulders, but all in all, Shizue knows that this was, perhaps, one of the best outcomes they could have hoped for.

Reports had come in from the team that had been assigned to watching the Kumakuras; too wrapped up in Hayato’s situation, Shizue hadn’t been paying all that much attention to his trial, but - Rohan’s body had been interred into a high-security full time care center; Saito Sejima, as broken by the failed psync as she’d thought him to be.

The Sagan family, kept safe by Hayato’s order, still untouched (she’d watch them for a while longer, just in case). Rohan, one half of the Cyclops Killer, locked away in prison as #89. Saito, the other half that made up the whole, just as unable to continue his murder spree as Rohan was.

And Kaname Date, standing by her side; a free man.

It’s a happy ending, from a certain angle. The only pain in it - or, at least, the only pain in it that she cares about; hers, Date’s, and Hayato’s - comes from personal feelings.

 _This is the best possible outcome_ , she reminds herself as she pushes open the doors that lead into Pewter’s lab, right beside the Psync Room. _You could not have planned this more perfectly. Some hitches along the way, sure, but...be happy, Shizue._

_You could have lost so much more._

Pewter perks up when they enter the room, and Shizue watches as he greets Date like an old friend, warm and open. She prays for the day she’ll be able to address him with that level of familiarity again.

“Date!” Pewter says, and nods to Shizue once he’s spotted her. “Are you here for more psync tests? Your results from yesterday finally finished computing, and - ”

“Actually, I’m here for paperwork,” he says, and Shizue shrugs an apology Pewter’s way.

“Sorry for spoiling your fun, but I had to tell him,” she says, and Pewter sighs.

“No, it’s quite alright,” he says. “It’s fine; you’re right, and we were going to have to get this done at _some_ point, anyway. Might as well be right now.”

“Sorry for the bother,” Date says. He slides into the chair across from Pewter, and makes a face when a pile of papers is shoved in front of him. 

“Your ID is in that pile,” Shizue notes. “Your badge, too.”

Pen poised to touch down on the first page, Date pauses. “Is that okay?” He asks, sounding unsure. “I mean - I don’t exactly _remember_ any police training.”

Shizue waves him off. “You have the instincts,” she says bluntly, and Pewter clears his throat. 

“Just sign the paperwork, Date,” he advises.

Around two hours pass in near silence, only broken up by the occasional frustrated noise from Pewter when whatever he’s tinkering with doesn’t work like he wants it to, and Date’s voice, when he asks for clarification regarding something on the forms he doesn’t quite understand. Pewter answers his queries easily, a gentle tone to his voice that edges on pity - he’s probably horrified at the mere idea of Date having to relearn the ins and outs of bureaucracy, but Shizue knows better. Hayato had never had any goddamn clue on how to fill out forms that he could avoid or shove off on someone else.

“Did you need something, Boss?” Pewter finally asks, a certain tilt to his head that tells Shizue she’s being judged. He’d been waiting for her to crack first, but he’d underestimated her power; for all that he thinks she has no patience, she has plenty to spare when she’s feeling challenged or petty, and right now she’s feeling a mix of both.

She flicks a glance at Date - brow furrowed, tip of his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth, fingers of his spare hand flipping the pen cap over and over, he’s clearly paying them zero attention - “I did,” she says, and motions for Pewter to step out of earshot of Date anyway. “I do.”

She situates herself into the corner of the room, and feels the cold of the walls bleed through even the thick leather of her jacket.

“So, what is it you needed?”

 _Nothing, really_ , is the answer, but she knows she needs to say _something_ , and so she answers: “The oxytocin. How are we handling that?” Pewter grimaces, and she peers up at him through half-closed lids. “You _said_ it would work.”

“I said it _should_ work,” he corrects, “and for now, it seems like it is - granted, it’s only been, what, forty-eight hours? That’s not really a solid timeframe to be collecting such data from, but…” he sighs, takes of his visor, and pinches the bridge of his nose as he rubs the lenses on his jacket before sliding them back on. “The real problem with it is the reason why it _isn’t_ a permanent solution,” he says plainly. “Just supplementing the oxytocin isn’t enough - part of treating any deficiency is know just how _much_ is needed to make up the difference, and oxytocin specifically isn’t something that has a generic base value, consistently. It’s affected by mood, physical health, medications...it’s an ingredient in a complex chemical soup, and while we can take a stab in the dark and make an educated guess at the best baseline value to be working with, that really is just a stop gap measure.”

Shizue doesn’t know chemistry, or biology, but she knows logistics. “We need something - automated,” she says. “Right? Something that can monitor his moods and oxytocin levels, and administer and adjust doses as needed.”

“Indeed.” Pewter inclines his head. “That said, however...such a device won’t be easy to produce, particularly not in a manner that makes it innocuous to Date, since I’m supposing we’re still going to be keeping him in the dark about his little...disability.” He pauses before the final word, as if not sure of the best way to phrase it.

“We are,” Shizue confirms. “Just work on it, okay? This ‘stop gap’ measure will work for a while, yet.”

“Only if we make _certain_ that he’s taking his medication,” Pewter points out. “How do you propose we do that, Boss?”

The idea that she’s been tossing around for hours now - since Date got out of surgery, but before he woke up - comes back to the forefront of her thoughts, and knocks _hard_ on the walls of her mind.

“He’ll...have to stay with me,” she sighs.

A startled, strangled noise squeaks it’s way out from deep within Pewter’s throat. “Are you - ” _serious,_ he chokes around, she can see it on his face, “ - _quite_ sure?”

Shizue nods once, firmly. “Yes,” she says. “I don’t know if I’d trust him with anyone else, to be honest.” She gave him a considering look. “Well, I suppose you’d do in a pinch, but if something went wrong, I don’t have much faith in your ability to overpower him, physically speaking.”

Pewter’s expression twitches in a way that tells her he agrees with her observation, but is insulted anyway. She smirks.

“I don’t need...to physically overpower him,” he argues, low and stilted. “I’d keep sedatives on hand.”

“Well, that’s comforting to know, I guess,” Shizue says. “Always nice to have a back up plan, so keep those sedatives on the back burner - but I think it will be fine to have him stay with me, for now.”

Piercing eyes lock with hers, and the thick, opaque green of Pewter’s visor does nothing to dull the sharp edge of his gaze as he peers at her wordlessly for a few minutes, taking her measure. “As you say,” he finally says quietly. “You are, in a manner of speaking, the closest thing we have to a next-of-kin for him, anyway.” A quick glance back over his shoulder, to where Date is still pecking away at his forms, and then he’s frowning at her again. “You do realise this means you’re going to have to make your apartment fit for human habitation, right? And that you’re actually going to have to go _home_ more nights than not.”

Smile tight, Shizue reaches forward and pinches Pewter - right on the neck, where his skin is exposed; she digs in and twists. He yelps, and jumps back, and Date blinks up at them from across the room.

“Everything alright?” He asks, voice and eyes wary, looking between the two of them with shoulders tense, like he isn’t sure who he should be backing away from first.

“Perfectly fine,” Pewter snaps. His gaze isn’t on Date - it’s on Shizue, irate; he has one hand pressed to his neck, like he’s trying to guard it from further attacks.

Slightly - but not completely - apologetic, Shizue gives him a rueful smile and shrugs. He huffs out an annoyed breath and rolls his eyes, but relaxes and steps closer once more. She’s forgiven, for now.

“My apartment,” she says lightly, “is perfectly fine.”

Pewter lets out a derisive little _ha!_ but he doesn’t protest her words out loud again. 

Taking that as a signal that the conversation is over, Shizue turns on her heel and stalks back to the table Date watches them from, paperwork forgotten in a scatter at his side.

His expression is almost unreadable as she steps closer, but she can see the tight line of his jaw - worry? Fear? Anxiety? She doesn’t know how to read Date’s expressions - Hayato bled through Sejima - just yet, and, given that she keeps comparing him to the mental reference list she has of Hayato in her head, it’s probably going to take her a while to learn.

Well. That sucks! Doesn’t matter.

She smiles down at him, and his eyes narrow. He leans back in his seat, legs and arms spread loose; he’s instinctively ready to shove away from the table and bolt if he has to, and she’s not sure if even he knows that, consciously.

“What were the two of you talking about?” His gaze flicks over her shoulder to Pewter, and then back to rest on her again.

“Your living arrangements,” Shizue answers frankly. “We can’t exactly keep you holed up in here - that would be cruel, not to mention illegal.”

In the background, Pewter snorts. Date blinks, like a place to live was something he hadn’t even considered. Hell; maybe it hadn’t been. He’d only been awake for about forty-eight hours, and in that time, he hadn’t left ABIS once - simply traversed up and down the different levels of the building within their jurisdiction. 

“Oh,” he says, soft and blank. “Where - where will I stay, then?”

“With me,” Shizue says, “at least for a little while.” A flash of panic lights up in his eyes, a taste of terror that feels somewhat familiar. She rolls her eyes. “It won’t be _that_ bad, you big baby.”

He considers it, turns the idea over in his mind - and eventually, slowly, hesitantly, he nods.

 _Do you know me?_ He’d asked, lost and wounded and confused.

 _I know you,_ she’d replied, half a lie and the total truth, and he’d taken her hand with barely a moment’s hesitation.

 _Trust,_ she’d labelled it then, and, again - trust is what she calls it now, when he nods, and says, “okay, sounds good to me.”

He’s uncertain, but he trusts. That’s all Shizue can ask for.

She can work with trust.

-x-

“It’s cold,” Date says, wonderingly.

“It’s winter,” Shizue grumbles. “We’ll probably see snow, this year.” She’d just woken up and stumbled out of her bed not five minutes ago - her brain isn’t working at full capacity just yet, and when Date, already fully dressed, steps away from where he’s staring blankly out of their windows to hand her a cup of coffee, the only thanks she can summon up is a grunt.

Date smiles, anyway. He understands her in a way that frustrates her, because she can’t return the favour. Her brain is dumb, even when it’s not running on the 5am reserves.

“Have you taken your meds?” She asks the question in a mumble, around her mug, and Date rolls his eye.

“Yes, mother,” he says, and the only reason Shizue doesn’t kick him is because she’s wrapped up snug and tight in her blankets on the couch, and she isn’t in the mood to be exposing her toes to the biting air of the morning. 

“Is the heater broken, or something?”

Date squints at her. “I don’t think so…?”

For a long moment, while her brain tries to parse the meaning of his words, she can only stare. “You mean you haven’t even _tried_ to turn the heater on? Date!”

He steps back from her, fast. “I didn’t think - ”

“Clearly!” A moment’s pause. “Don’t just stand there; go put it on!”

“Right,” he says, “I’ll do exactly that.”

He runs off, and he isn’t gone long, but even before he’s made it back, Shizue is sure she can feel the change in the temperature of the room. It’s not much, admittedly - but the apartment is on its way to no longer being a giant refrigerator, so she supposes she can forgive him.

She’s in a much better mood when Date reenters the room, and he graciously takes the smile she offers him for what it is; an apology.

Their mornings are usually spent in silence before they head into ABIS; nearly two months of living together - a month-and-a-half? - have proven that well. Shizue can’t function without an hour to kick her brain into gear and turn her blood into coffee, and Date chooses the early hours of the day to be contemplative. Usually, they exchange few words - just _good mornings_ , and _have you taken your meds?_ and _here’s your coffee._ Nothing special, nothing even approaching conversational.

Date settles in next to her on the couch, though, which means there’s something on his mind, and he wants to talk about it.

She squints at him, and fights through the early morning haze. The least she can do is _try_ to be a somewhat functioning friend. “You okay?”

“It’s cold,” he mutters, and curls in on himself a little.

“Yeah, we established that,” she laughs. “It’s _winter_ \- don’t worry; the apartment will warm up soon, and both my car and ABIS are never kept at a temperature below ‘comfortable and cozy.’” She pauses. “Date?”

He’d spoken to her, but he wasn’t looking at her. His arms are folded across his chest, and she’s slightly concerned when she sees how tightly he grips himself. “Winter,” he repeats. “It’s December.”

“...yeah?” Shizue takes another sip of her coffee, feeling the rough of the dregs scrape on her tongue. “Nearly Christmas - only a few days out, now.”

Something close to agony flashes across Date’s face - loss mixed with utter bewilderment; he has no idea why he’s feeling like this. “Christmas,” he murmurs, and his knuckles are bone white.

“Date - ” Shizue begins, alarmed, and it clicks.

Hitomi Sagan’s face flashes into her mind, because she will always remember this woman she’s never truly met, even if Date can’t. Even if Hayato is...gone.

She’s heard enough from Pewter to know that some things are never truly gone, though. Never truly lost, not completely, even when it involves the psync and ego breakdown.

 _He must have really loved her_. Something wistful, something sorrowful, something almost bitter. Shizue shoves it down, and puts her empty mug down on her coffee table.

“Guess this is gonna be your first Christmas, huh?” She asks, as gently as she can.

Dante hunches in on himself even further. “Technically,” he says. He sounds far away. He sounds frustrated.

He sounds miserable.

“I must have - ” He falters, and falls silent. He works his jaw, and Shizue can see the exact moment he decides to give up on chasing whatever fragment - of memory, of emotion - that haunts him. “Nevermind,” he says, quiet. “Sorry, Boss.”

She waves him off, and tries not to feel the burn of regret stoked by guilt that stirs in her gut. “Don’t apologise,” she tells him. “You’ve done nothing wrong.” A minute passes in silence, and Shizue sighs, before pushing herself to her feet. “Come on,” she says, and claps a hand onto his shoulder. “Time for work.”

Under her touch, Date shifts. He looks up at her, and something sparks in his eye - he swallows, and lets her ground him; bring him back into reality. “Right,” he says. “Right. I hear you, Boss.”

When they get to ABIS, they part - Shizue goes to her office, and Date goes to his own desk, in the office area reserved for the psyncers. She works her morning away near mindlessly - when ABIS is busy, it is _busy_ , but when it isn’t, it’s all just the boring wait game; she almost wishes for the days of being an ordinary rookie doing the rounds.

 _Almost_. Despite the occasional boredom, her position comes with more perks than downfalls.

When her alarm chimes for lunch - she hadn’t originally had any set, but Pewter had done it one time when she wasn’t paying attention, and she has no idea how to turn them off - she yawns, locks her computer into standby, and stands up to stretch. Her spine cracks, each joint popping as she bends back.

God. She’s getting old.

There isn’t really any such thing as a lunch rush at ABIS; since so many of the operatives worked such weird and out of - ha - _psync_ hours the small cafeteria they ran was just open twenty-four seven; vending machines were scattered around the levels for people as lazy (or as _busy_ ) as Shizue usually was.

The room is basically empty when Shizue steps inside, and while she nods at the few people scattered around at tables, she guns straight for the counter. She isn’t in the mood for anything fancy; after a few seconds of small talk, she’s got a plain chicken and salad sandwich in her hands, and she’s making her way back to her office. Her phone buzzes before she reaches her destination, and she transfers her sandwich to one hand to pull it out of her pocket. It is still, admittedly, a struggle.

do you know of any operatives without a currently active case? call from upstairs, they have an uncooperative witness.

Shizue sighs, and turns on her heel - not quite back the way she came, but on the way there; _I’ll get back to you on that_ , she replies to Pewter, and steps into the area that houses the desks and booths of her psyncers.

Mio sits closest to the door, perched right in the corner. Her desk is neat and orderly; uniform and monochrome. She’s probably logged the least amount of hours into Somnia of all the psyncers in ABIS, including Date, but she also has the highest psync success rate - she’s never failed a psync, and she’s never failed to clear a somnium within the allotted six minutes.

“Commander,” she greets, looking startled to see Shizue - which, fair, she kind of has a reputation for not leaving her office, and it’s not like it’s an unwarranted one. “Can I help you?”

Shizue squints at her. “Maybe,” she says. “Mio, are you working on any case currently?”

Mio blinks. “I am,” she says slowly. “That fraud scheme involving a jeweller’s chain - I’m heading that, from the ABIS side of things.” She tilts her head, her short, straight hair slipping from where she’s tucked it behind one ear. “It’s nothing too urgent, all things considered. Is there something else you need me for?”

“Maybe not, if you’ve already got a case - I’ll look around first, see if anyone else is available, and if not, I’ll come back to you, okay?”

Mio narrows her eyes at her. “You’re just trying to get out of going back to your paperwork, aren’t you.” She doesn’t phrase it like a question.

Shizue waves over her shoulder as she walks off, deeper into the room. “Good luck with that fraud, Mio!”

Several people look up at her call - Kyoka, pen between her teeth and ink soaking into her bottom lip; Eiji, leaning back against Date’s desk - and Date himself, one brow raised in silent question, the maudlin that had soaked him earlier seemingly gone. That’s nice, at least.

“Yo, Boss!” Eiji greets her with a grin - he was their newest psyncer, before Date, and there’s a part of her that wonders if he doesn’t feel inadequate next to him; even though Date’s so much newer, with so much less training, he’s a far more natural psyncer than Eiji has ever been, for all that he’s far more efficient than Date ever is. At the very least, if it bothers him, Eiji isn’t the type of man to let that change how he acts - he isn’t the petty type like that. “What brings you to our humble abode?”

“Alert from Pewter,” she says, and waggles the phone she still holds ready in her hand. “Got a difficult witness upstairs, and they’re asking if they can bring them down to us. Any of you three busy?”

They somehow exchange a glance that communicates whatever it is that’s on all their minds in the space of about three seconds, and it’s moments like this that make Shizue question if there really is something psychic - something mystical, beyond just the science - to psyncing. 

“Kyoka is,” Eiji says, finally, slow. “Date and I are both free, I think?”

“I’m just wrapping up my last case,” Date agrees. “It’s all reports and red tape from here; nothing that can’t wait.”

Shizue looks between the two of them. “So? Which one of you wants to go?”

They consider each other for one long, silent moment, and then Date sighs, and stands, pulling his coat on from where he’d slung it over the back of his chair. “I’ll go,” he says.

Eiji looks relieved, but also slightly embarrassed. “You sure, bud?”

“You hate psyncing with witnesses,” Date says plainly. “Same with the victims. You’d rather tackle the criminals themselves. I can handle this one.”

Eiji looks slightly blown away, like he hadn’t been expecting Date to know that, and Shizue can’t really blame him. She’s left reeling a bit, slightly, stunned by the careful regard and insight he shows for a coworker he’s known for less than a month - he’d only met the other psyncers once medical had cleared him for active duty about three weeks ago.

He’d fit right in, for all that Hayato had never been a social butterfly, for all that Date still wasn’t one now. That’s something all psyncers have in common, she supposes: their brains all work just slightly _differently_. They see things differently to how the rest of them did, which is how they managed to keep such a grip on themselves when psyncing, how they managed to all connect with each other so fast while simultaneously barely talking to anyone outside of their office, let alone outside of ABIS.

“Let’s go, Date,” she says, once she’s sure they’ve made their final decision. He nods, and falls into step behind her easily.

“Do you have any other information on the dreamer?” He asks. “The crime they witnessed, what it is I’ll be searching for specifically?”

His gaze is sharp, focused - just not on the present. A bittersweet feeling blooms in Shizue’s heart, and she can’t help the rueful smile that spread. He really does still have those detective’s instincts. 

“No, I don’t have any further info, sorry,” she says. “I’m sure Pewter will give you the brief once we get to the psync room.” The backlog she has piled up on her desk sings an unappealing siren song in the back of her mind, but she ignores it; it will have to wait, this _can’t._ Standard ABIS procedure: the Commander, or an appointed power, must be present for each psync - for accountability’s sake.

Date walks a bit ahead of her just as they reach the doors that will lead them into Pewter’s lab - and then, beyond that, into the psync room it connects to. He nudges the door open, and holds it for her - she steps in, and hears the voices that echo from the psync room.

“Ah - Boss,” Pewter greets her, when she steps into the control room. “And Date, lovely.” He stands by the chair of a pale, tight-lipped woman. “This is our witness,” he says. “She’s been kind enough to sign the consent forms.”

“Great,” Shizue says, and means it. Information found in a somnium isn’t admissible in court, and anyone who spoke out about ABIS would technically be in more trouble than ABIS itself if they went ahead without informed consent, but proof on paper always made things easier, even in underground organizations. “How drugged is she right now?”

“She was very stressed,” Pewter says. “I am no doctor, but I do have the medical licenses required to administer a mild sedative - just to help calm her nerves, of course. As I said, she _did_ sign a consent form.”

Shizue can feel Date roll his eye from where he hovers at her shoulder. “So, she’s not going to remember any of this?”

“A hazy dream will be all she recalls,” Pewter confirms. “It’s easier that way, no?”

“I suppose,” Date says. He looks dubious, though - so far, he’s mostly dealt with criminals, and they’re brought in unconscious for ease of transport anyway. This will be his first civilian dreamer.

She claps her hands together. The sound echoes out with a _boom_ in the large room, and both Date and Pewter jump. The witness stirs from her stupor, and squints at Shizue like she _knows_ she just did something. “Let’s get you both hooked up.”

By now, Pewter is well accustomed to setting up the psync machine, and Date knows his part well, too - together they gently lock the witness in place, and then as Pewter comes back to the control room and starts flicking switches to standby, reading to activate, Date slips into his own seat.

Shizue leans down, and speaks into the mic. “Six minutes, Date,” she reminds him. “ _Remember.”_

He nods. “I know,” he says. “I will, I promise.”

“Subject and psyncer both stable,” Pewter murmurs, eyes fixed on the screen. “Readings normal, she’s calm - you’re good to go, Date. Activating psync.”

Light flares, the buzz of the machine, and both Date and the witness slump in their seats; unconscious, technically, the automatic tension of wakefulness bleeds out of them.

Static buzzes on one screen, blurring into a landscape twisted by the non-logic of a dream.

Pewter lets out a relieved sigh. “Psync successful,” he says. “Stability holding up; some more activity from Date’s waves, but nothing outside of the error margins. You’re free to explore her somnium, Date.”

 _“Right.”_ Date’s voice comes through the speakers, as warped as the world that shows on the screen. It’s still recognisably _him_ , but he’s as subject to the rules of the dream he’s in as everything else in it. It’s part of why not everyone can be a psyncer - even if you have the right mindset to keep yourself together while breaching the ego threshold, even if you can handle the sheer nonsense of a dream, you might _not_ be able to handle how it affects you, too.

Date steps forward to do his job - working his way through the Mental Locks the witness has placed around their memory of the event; two this time, she notes. That’s a pretty average amount; rarely do dreamers have just the singular lock - it’s usually two, sometimes three. Shizue’s only seen a higher Mental Lock count than three a few times, and those are the somniums she always hates watching. Thankfully, this looks like it’s going to be a standard dive, so she takes her attention away from the screen, makes sure the mic is _off_ , and turns to Pewter.

He notices her staring after only a few seconds. He frowns up at her, hunched over his console. “What?” His eyes flick to Date’s unconscious form, just briefly. “Did something happen with him?”

“He got depressed about Christmas this morning,” she says. 

“He can join the club,” Pewter mutters. “Any particular reason why? What set him off?” He frowns. “He _is_ taking his medication, correct?”

“Yes, Pewter,” Shizue starts patiently. “I make sure to count his pills every day, morning and night. He’s taking them; on schedule with the correct doses.” She shakes her head. “I think his mood this morning had more to do with...Hitomi Sagan.” The name comes out awkwardly, roughly shaped and pointed in her mouth. Date can’t hear her, yet she’s still nervous to be saying it in his presence.

Pewter hums thoughtfully. “It’s possible,” he says. “ _Some_ memory will always cling, even from a rough and failed psync. Not only was Hitomi Sagan important to Hayato Yagyu - the memories involving her were some of his most recent. If there’s anything in this world he’ll end up remembering, it will be her.” He pauses. “That’s still highly unlikely, of course. He’s only got fragments of the whole; you cannot repair a memory with key pieces simply not _there_.”

Shizue’s quiet for a long moment - the only time she speaks is to lean forward, switch on the mic, and remind Date that he’s on a timer; “three minutes left!” She switches it off again immediately after, and tries to avoid thinking about the fact that she’s bitter.

“Moving on,” she says, “how goes our little side project?”

They’d thought long and hard about the best ‘permanent’ solution for Date’s oxytocin deficiency - right now, with the supplements buried beneath a mountain of other pills prescribed to him, antibiotics and anti-inflammatories and painkillers, he hadn’t really paid much attention to what was different about each pill, just taken them as ordered. In any other situation, Shizue _knows_ she’d be annoyed with him for just swallowing them down, no questions asked, but for right now, it works in their favour.

It wouldn’t forever, though - she knew that, too. Eventually, he’d be cleared to come off of the myriad of other medications he was taking, and he’d start questioning what the singular one he had to keep taking was.

Pewter had been the one who’d started thinking up the tech they’d need to monitor Date’s oxytocin levels and administer his doses correctly, but it had been Shizue who’d thought of _how_ they could implement it in a way he wouldn’t question - 

\- an artificial eye.

It was an almost perfect solution, but for one thing: an eye is small. All they needed was not.

Pewter had been fiddling with different designs, prototypes and nanomachines, but he hadn’t gotten one working quite well enough yet for either of them to feel safe about shoving it into Date’s head.

“It’s...well, it’s _going_ ,” Pewter allows, a little rueful, mostly tired. 

“He’ll be off his meds by Valentine’s, probably. We don’t have forever, Pewter.”

“I know that,” Pewter says, with a little glare up at her. He reaches for the mic. “One minute, Date!”

 _“I’ll be done in less than thirty seconds,”_ Date says. _“Get ready to end psync.”_

“The moment you send the signal, I shall pull you out,” Pewter promises, and flicks the mic back off. “I know that, Boss. I am working as fast as I can, I promise you.” His voice is heavy, and when Shizue squints at him, she can see the deep bags that have formed under his eyes, mostly hidden by the green of his visor.

She sighs. “I know,” she says. “I’m sorry, I’m just - stressed.”

“Aren’t we all,” Pewter murmurs. “You look like you need more sleep, Boss.”

“I don’t want to hear that from a zombie like you.”

Down in the psync machine, his face blurred by distance and glass, Date sits up slowly. She thinks he grimaces when he stretches and stands, but she can’t be certain. She’s in top physical condition, but not even _her_ eyesight is _that_ good.

The witness doesn’t stir as the psync machine lifts away from her face - the natural deep sleep granted by the machine finishing what Pewter’s sedatives started. Following procedure to a T, like any good psyncer, the first thing Date does after making sure he himself is okay is check on the dreamer - her vitals, her position. He sends a questioning look up at Pewter, who reassures him that she’s running stable.

Like that, Date’s job is done. The footage of the somnium will be discreetly sent upstairs, with a self destruct on it that will activate in twelve hours time. This is, after all, not an ABIS investigation; merely one of the lip services they’re expected to pay out to the sister force they share a building with. He enters the control room, gaze still on the witness he just psynced with.

“What happens now?” He asks. He sounds curious, and Shizue remembers Date hasn’t actually _worked_ an out-of-ABIS case yet; they’ve kept him smalltime, and they’ve kept him close and personal.

“We’ll send for an upstairs officer to come retrieve her, and email the footage to the head of the investigation,” Pewter says. “Thank you for your help here, Date, but this is where your role in this case ends.”

Date blinks, seemingly surprised, but he doesn’t protest - simply shrugs. “Okay,” he says. “Does that mean I can leave?”

“Of course,” Pewter says, and dismisses him with a wave. He turns back to his computers, attention refocusing on them, and Shizue is summarily dismissed, too. She’d probably feel miffed if she wasn’t so exhausted.

“I’ll escort you back to your office,” Date says, and Shizue rolls her eyes even as she smiles.

“What?” She teases. “Scared I’ll be attacked in the middle of ABIS?”

“More like I’m worried you’ll collapse in the hall,” Date says dryly. “Have you not been sleeping, or something?”

She scoffs. “Well, I mean, it’s kind of hard to get a decent amount of beauty sleep when your roommate snores like he’s got an _elephant_ sitting on his chest all night…” She trails off with a grin, and Date rolls his eyes as he shoulder checks past her into the hall - playfully, she can tell.

“I,” Date says, light and airy, “do _not_ snore.”

“I could film you tonight when you start up, if you want. Hell, we can go back to Pewter right now and ask him to bring up the security footage of the psync room - you were snoring there, too.”

“I’m kind of regretting my decision to be nice to you now, you know? I might just go back to work and let my boss fall where she may.”

“You’re a cruel man, Kaname Date,” Shizue says, but she’s smiling. There’s laughter in her tone, and when Date finally reaches her office - he pushes open her door - she feels warm. Relaxed, under her bone deep exhaustion. “Thank you for thinking of me.”

“Anytime, Boss,” he says easily, and leaves without any further fanfare. He goes back to his work, and Shizue turns her attention once more to her own, but there is a small nagging in the back of her mind for the rest of the day, interfering with her focus.

And so, hours later, before she clocks out for the night, Shizue makes a very important purchase with ABIS funds.

When she gets home, there’s a baffled message from Pewter on her phone.

> why on earth did you just buy a synthetic christmas tree?

-x-

Shizue’s birthday arrives, and she almost doesn’t realise it.

That’s unusual, for her - every year is a spectacle, bigger than the last. _This_ year, though… there’s just been so much going on that it’s the last thing on her mind.

 _Too much going on_ , she thinks, and resists the urge to rub at her temples when she walks into her office to see a cupcake with a candle on top placed on her desk. She picks it up, peels back the wrapping, and takes a bite. Red velvet.

It’s a favourite. She pulls out her phone to shoot a _thank you_ to Pewter, since she can’t imagine who else would have left it there for her, and for just a moment enjoys this little gift.

No calls will come from Hayato, this year - well, he never calls her on her birthday, anyway. Hasn’t for years, the little twerp. _So ungrateful._

She takes another bite of her cupcake; the final. Shoves Hayato Yagyu out of her mind.

“Happy birthday, Shizue,” she whispers. “Another year down.”

(She’ll be drinking alone tonight.)

-x-

When the tree arrives, pretty much all of ABIS shows up to help with the assembly - at least, that’s what it feels like, with how crowded Shizue finds her office.

“Hey,” she says, and when she isn’t heard over the general volume of too many people in too little space, she repeats herself, but louder. “ _Hey!_ What the _hell_ are you all doing in my office?”

She decorates it colourfully because she wants it to be welcoming. She tries to be open and friendly because she wants her subordinates to feel like she’s someone they can just talk to - but that doesn’t mean they can just go barging into her office whenever they feel like it, especially without her supervision; she has classified files stored in it.

“Ah - sorry, boss.” One of the techies - she can’t recall his name - grimaces, and speaks once the rest of the crowd falls silent. “We heard about the tree, and...we wanted to help?” His nerves had spiked higher the longer he talked; his voice rising in pitch, trailing off into an uncertain question.

Shizue sighs, and resists the urge to rub at her temples. They’re insufferable idiots, the lot of them, but they’re _her_ insufferable idiots, and she can’t deny that she finds their eagerness to build a _Christmas tree_ of all things kind of endearing.

“Okay, okay,” she says. “Fine - you can all help with putting the tree together, just - not in my office, okay?”

A cheer goes out around the room; cacophonous, near deafening. In short order, the people piled into her office file out of it - one group carrying the box with the tree in it out over their heads, several following them with storage boxes full of tinsel and baubles in hand.

“ _How_ did they even find out about the tree?” Shizue mutters. It wasn’t a _secret_ , but she also hadn’t been advertising it...it was something she’d ordered on an impulse, mostly meant as an attempt to cheer Date up - but then she’d gotten slightly embarrassed by that, and had, quite honestly, forgotten about the tree altogether for the most part.

“That would be me.” Pewter’s voice, right beside her, and only her rigid self control keeps her from flinching. Internally, she just jumped about a foot into the air from a dead standstill. “Since you ordered it with ABIS funds, it only seemed right that it was something all of ABIS was allowed to partake in.”

The sentiment is sweet, and he sounds genuine, but Shizue narrows her eyes at him. “This is payback for something, isn’t it?” She asks. “If it really had been _just_ about some festive ABIS bonding time, you would have had the tree delivered to the cafeteria or a lounge in the first place. You had it sent to my office to _annoy_ me.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny,” Pewter says, cheery grin never leaving his face. “And while we stand here, the more time we waste - or do you _not_ want to help assemble the tree?”

Shizue scoffs, and flips him the bird as she exits her office, heading for the source of the deafening noise that echoes from down the hall. The cafeteria; as she’d suspected.

She walks into the room and enters a realm of chaos. Festive chaos.

“Are you stupid?” It’s Kyoka, usually so quiet and polite, in a heated debate with one of their investigators - not one of the ones they use on loan from upstairs, but one of their own; ABIS trained. They’re a pretty new feature in the department, as they shift into becoming a more private government taskforce, rather than an addition to the MPD.

“Excuse me?” The investigator sounds disbelieving, and while Shizue knows she should probably break up any altercations between employees before they become full on fights, she’s also an avid fan of workplace drama. She settles in to enjoy the show, leaning back against a wall. If it seems like it’ll get physical, she’ll step in. “ _What_ did you just say to me?”

Kyoka waves the paper she holds unfolded in her hand; the manual, Shizue presumes, and can’t tell if she’s amused or disbelieving that a _Christmas tree_ needs in depth instructions. “It tells us what to do here quite clearly,” Kyoka says. “First, you assemble the spine of the tree. That’s already done. Then, on each layer, you hook the branches from the corresponding colour group.” She points at the end of the branch she holds in her other hand; the manual crumples in her grip. “See? The hook at the end of this on is purple; it’s part of the purple group, which goes on the second layer, counting up. All the colour groups represent a different branch length - if you just go shoving them on anywhere, we’ll have an uneven tree.”

“We’ll have a _unique_ tree.”

“Yeah, a uniquely bad one!”

“I didn’t realise Christmas trees were such serious business.” For the second time that day, Shizue is nearly scared out of her skin by someone speaking right into her ear when she wasn’t expecting it. Just like with Pewter, not even a single muscle twitches out of place. Unlike Pewter, though, Date’s smug smirk tells her he isn’t fooled. When she scowls at him, his gaze flicks away from her, to rest on where Kyoka and the investigator are still bickering intensely. “It looks like they’re about to declare an eternal blood feud,” he says conversationally.

She sighs. “They just might,” she agrees. “A lot of people here - in ABIS, I mean - aren’t just selected for the job or transferred here because they have the skills we need; though that _is_ a big part of it.”

“What’s the other part?”

“They don’t really have anyone to miss them,” Shizue says simply. “We work odd hours, and we’re a top secret unit - not to mention, our work is frequently dangerous. Most people here...don’t have people on the outside depending on them. Distant relatives, maybe. Parents or siblings they meet up with once or twice a year. Casual friends.” She shrugs. “For a lot of people, ABIS is the closest thing they have to a family, these days. So, instead of spending Christmas alone, seeing couples pass them in the streets…” She trails off, but Date gets it. She can see it in his eyes, hear it in his thoughtful hum.

“Have a ‘perfect’ Christmas down here, huh?”

“Exactly,” Shizue agrees. With how he falls quiet after that, leaning into the wall beside her, she figures the conversation is over - but then, warmth wraps around her hand, and Date tugs her forward. “Hey!” She protests.

He only smiles back at her. “You bought the tree,” he points out at her. “You have to help put this perfect Christmas you’ve orchestrated together.”

Shizue can feel her cheeks flare hot - as bright red as her jacket, probably, _goddammit_ \- and she grumbles under her breath. “I was _fine_ just watching.”

“Well, _I_ wasn’t,” Date says. “This is like, my first Christmas. I’d like to assemble a Christmas tree - or at least help with doing that - but I’m not about to leave you leaning up against a wall by yourself.”

“Oh my god,” she mutters, and clears her throat, before continuing on, louder: “Date. I wasn’t - being a, a depressed wallflower, or anything - ”

“Then you should be fine with helping out,” he insists. “You can call dibs on putting the star on top, or something.”

Shizue sighs, but can’t fight the smile that bubbles up. “I’m not going to win this argument, am I?”

Date squeezes her hand. “Absolutely not,” he says, and smiles back at her.

-x-

“Huh.” Date, halfway inside her office - leaning in through the doorway, arm raised to knock - blinks as he notices the new addition to her decorations. “I was wondering where that went; it wasn’t in the cafeteria when I went to grab a coffee this morning.”

Shizue shrugs, and gestures for him to come in. “It’s not Christmas anymore, so it seems silly to leave it sitting out there,” she says. “But it also seems kind of...sad? To just disassemble. So I thought I’d keep it in here. Fits nicely, don’t you think?”

Date’s gaze sweeps the room in a quick but thorough onceover, and when it comes back to rest on Shizue, she can see the dry amusement that sparks within it. “Sure,” he says, agreeing in that indulgent way that tells her he doesn’t actually agree.

“I don’t like you when you’re being passive aggressive,” she tells him. “You’re hanging out with Mio too much. She’s a bad influence on you.”

Date snorts. “Right,” he says. “But all that aside, I actually came here for a reason.”

Shizue raises a brow. “Oh?”

He lifts up a hand, and waves a sheaf of papers she hadn’t noticed he was holding. “Express delivery from upstairs for the Boss,” he says, and passes it to her.

“By which you mean one of the upstairs officers noticed you coming into work, and bullied you into playing messenger so they didn’t have to jump through hoops to get down here.”

“Maybe,” Date agrees.

“Definitely,” she says. “If it was urgent, you wouldn’t have stopped to get coffee first.” She narrows her eyes at him. “Or, considering that it’s _you_ , maybe you would have.”

Date has the gall to look offended, as if she’d just said something completely outrageous. “You make it sound like I don’t have my priorities straight,” he complains.

“You don’t,” she says bluntly.

“Okay, wow, ouch,” he says. “You don’t pull your punches, do you, Boss?”

“It goes against everything I believe in to lie to my friends,” she says lightly, and doesn’t realise it until Date grins at her.

“‘Friend,’ huh? Not ‘subordinate?’”

Shizue wonders how much trouble she’d get in if she evicted him physically from the room. “Get out of my office,” she says, and Date rolls his eye.

“You’re the boss, Boss.” He pauses in the doorway, just as she’s pulling out her boxcutter to slice open the cable ties keeping the papers together. “Happy New Year.”

She stills. Of course, she’d known the date, but - “Happy New Year,” she replies.

Kaname Date leaves her office, just like Hayato Yagyu left her life. The calendar turns over, and a year begins anew.

For someone very special to her, a life begins anew.

It’s too early to be thinking depressing thoughts like that. Shizue sighs, and turns her attention back to the work waiting for her. It’s not exactly a _fun_ way to be spending the last day of the year, but it is a distracting one, and that’s what she needs.

She and Hayato had drifted apart, of course - it would have been kind of difficult not to, given the path he’d chosen to tread. But, in some ways, they had still been the closest thing the other had to family. The _only_ thing.

This will be her first year without a midnight call from a drunken Hayato, wishing her a blessed new year and telling her that he loves her. The first year in a while where that call won’t end in sobbed out apologies.

Shizue has no idea if Hayato had ever even remembered those calls - they only came on New Year’s Eve, after all, and only when he had killed any and all sobriety in him. She doubts he ever did remember the things he said to her, but the call records must have shown up on his phone. She wonders why he never called at other times. She wonders why she never tried calling him back herself.

She wonders…

No. No, she doesn’t. She _knows_.

And she regrets.

 _Happy New Year,_ _old friend_ , she thinks. _I’ll pour one out for you tonight._

-x-

January passes in a cold, unpleasant blur. Shizue had been right about the snow - from just before Christmas to mid January, the city is an eerie white hellscape. As February approaches, it’s still much colder than she’d like it to be - but hey, at least rain isn’t snow.

“I don’t get your vendetta against snow,” Date mutters, arms crossed over his chest - sitting in the passenger seat of her car and looking incredibly uncomfortable. “It’s way better than _this_.” He gestures with a gloved hand at the sleet that falls outside. Most mornings, Date likes to make his own way to work - Shizue worries about him wandering the length of the city alone, but hey, he’s an adult. Roommate or not, she doesn’t own him.

On mornings like today, he can’t exactly do that; unless turning up to work soaked to the bone and looking like a drowned cat is what he’s after, and so he acquiesces to riding in Shizue’s car with her.

“I like rain,” she says. “It’s soothing. And you know you can adjust that seat, right? Slide it back a bit. Give yourself some more leg room.”

Date shrugs. “I don’t ride in your car that much,” he says. “Seems like a waste of effort, if you ask me.”

Shizue rolls her eyes. “It takes seconds to adjust the seat either way,” she says. “And who else, exactly, do you think I’m driving around? You’re just lazy.”

“I don’t want to hear that from _you.”_

Their drive continues on, in silence - it isn’t until Shizue’s parked her car at the station that she speaks again, and Date pauses in the act of undoing his seatbelt and reaching for his door to listen. 

“My first murder case,” she says. “Back when I was still a rookie...when we found the body, it was snowing. It doesn’t bother me now, really - it’s been my job for so long that I don’t think it _can_ \- but. I still don’t like snow.” Hayato hadn’t liked snow, either. _When we got mouthy, or loud, we’d get locked outside. I spent way too many nights sleeping curled up in the yard - I’m probably lucky I didn’t lose limbs, in winter. Or, you know, die._

“I guess I can understand that,” Date says. “Maybe if I see a dead body in the snow, it’ll ruin it for me, too.”

Shizue barks out a startled laugh. “Really, Date? _That’s_ what you took out of that story?”

Date shrugs. “Sorry,” he mutters. “What do you want from me? Sympathy? I mean, it sucks, and I get that, but your tone right now was super hard to read.” He pauses. “You’re always super hard to read, Boss.” He sounds kind of sad when he says it. He sounds kind of wistful.

Shizue tells herself that she can’t feel the tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, the burning swell in the back of her throat. “I am not,” she says, and opens her door. “You’re just super stupid, Date.”

He sighs when he steps out of the car, and doesn’t slam his door - she’s almost upset about that, because there’s a part of her that wants to scream at Date right now, the part of her that’s been grieving and smiling to cover it up for months, because even if this is Hayato, it isn’t Hayato, he’s dead, he’s gone, and every difference in Kaname Date that separates them is just further proving that -

\- but thoughts like that are unfair to Date, who hasn’t done anything wrong, so she swallows them down like oil she wants to choke on.

“Sorry,” she says, finally, after a long silence has echoed out. The cold of winter has her skin burning, and across the car from her, Date is shivering. He could have gone inside. Could have left her there. That he hasn’t just makes her feel worse. “That was uncalled for.”

For a moment - a drawn out, silent moment; almost frozen in time - Date just stares at her. Takes her in. Assesses her. “It’s fine,” he tells her. “I _am_ stupid.” He’s smiling when he says it - faint and crooked, like the part of him that’s still hurt and unhappy isn’t putting in effort to curve his lips up; it’s clear what the smile means, as small as it is.

_Forgiveness._

“Still,” she says, and sniffs, because of the cold. It’s the cold that makes her eyes water enough that she has to wipe them dry to clear her vision. It’s all the cold’s fault. “A good boss shouldn’t mock her subordinate’s flaws.”

Date laughs, and shakes his head. “Come on, Boss,” he says. “Let’s get inside before we freeze. I’ll get us some coffee.”

Following his lead, Shizue steps into the MPD.

A part of her, she thinks, feel healed.

-x-

The cold of winter is just starting to wane when, thankfully, Pewter gets his first real breakthrough in the prosthetic eye he’s been engineering for Date - not that Date knows that.

“I think it will be ready to implant, soon,” he says, standing before Shizue’s desk. She is, for once, actually sitting in her chair instead of perching on the desk itself; even she can’t avoid work for forever. His gaze keeps flicking to tree she has shoved in one corner, decorated gaudily, and he sighs. “It’s February,” he says. “Are you going to be taking that down anytime soon?”

“Hmm? Oh, I don’t think so,” she says. “I mean, what a waste of effort to take it all down just to put it up again at the end of the year, right? Besides, it adds colour to the room. I like colour.”

“The last thing your office needs more of, Boss, is _colour_.”

“Rude,” she says. “I thought you’d like it, considering how much you like green.” Pewter opens his mouth as if to protest - she’s so good at pushing his buttons, he rises to the bait almost _every_ time - but before he can build up a good head of steam and get them _really_ off topic, she continues, “it’s good news about the prosthetic, though - he’ll be off the majority of his meds by the end of the month.”

Annoyance flickers across Pewter’s face, but he bites his tongue, and his shoulders slump, just a little bit. “I am well aware,” he says. “I know more than anyone, probably, the kind of time crunch we are working under if we do not want Date growing suspicious.”

“It’s hard to think he has such a disability,” Shizue says. “He talks so easily with the other psyncers - I wouldn’t call him social, necessarily, but he’s _friendly_ , for sure.”

“The oxytocin supplements he’s taking for his deficiency work as a sort of mood stabiliser,” Pewter says. “It doesn’t make him feel or act in any particular way; it just gets him to the level of, well, stability, that he needs in order to go about his daily life without acting on...more violent impulses.”

“Makes you wonder how Saito Sejima got through life for as long as he did,” Shizue mutters, and Pewter hums his agreement.

“For him, the gift of a powerful father is one that kept on giving, it seems.”

“You’re not wrong there,” Shizue says, and shifts in her seat, rolling her shoulders back. Something in her spine cracks, and Pewter makes a face.

“You should exercise more,” he says bluntly. “Do some stretches.”

“I’m just old.” She waves him off. “Was there anything else you needed?”

“Not really,” Pewter says, and takes her slightly annoyed words for the dismissal they are. “I will keep you updated on the prosthetic.”

He leaves with the last word.

“Smartass,” Shizue mutters.

-x-

Late February, and Shizue strolls into the psyncer’s room with a little skip in her step. Mio raises a brow at her as she enters.

“You look happy,” she notes. “Good news?”

“Of a sort!” She smiles at Mio, before her gaze narrows in on Date, and she calls him over to her. He comes without question, but when he slows to a stop before her, there’s a question in his eyes.

“Can I help you, Boss?”

“Yes and no,” Shizue says. “I have a little Valentine’s gift for you, Date.”

He squints at her. “Yeah, I don’t buy that,” he says. “Besides, Valentine’s was over a week ago.”

“And slow and steady wins the race. I had to be sure your gift was perfect!” She reaches forward, and takes his hand. He startles in her grip, eyes wide - but he doesn’t pull away.

The last time they’d held hands had been months earlier, at the impromptu Christmas party ABIS had thrown. The time before that had been when she’d led a confused, wounded amnesiac to her house. That same trust that had been in his eyes back then was in them now, just stronger.

It’s as humbling as it is heartwarming.

Kyoka yelps when Shizue starts tugging on Date’s arm, leading him out of the room. “Commander!” She protests. “We were working on a case!”

“We shouldn’t be gone too long!” She calls back over her shoulder. “And when I give him back to you, he should be more productive than ever, promise!”

The door swings shut behind her and Date, and he narrows his eye at her. “What is _that_ supposed to mean?”

Coy and cat-like, Shizue smirks. “Oh, you’ll _see_ ,” she purrs, and has a little giggle to herself at the pun. Date stares at her like she’s crazy, but follows her willingly enough anyway.

“Ah, good, you brought him.” Pewter looks harried when they enter his workshop - harried, and excited. “Date, Date - come in! Come sit down.” He pats at a chair, pulled a little bit away from the control panel.

Date shoots Shizue an uncertain look. Benevolent commander that she is, she decides to give him the push forward he clearly needs, and shoves him into the chair.

“Can I ask what’s going on?” Date asks. He doesn’t quite sound annoyed, not yet, but he’s edging it.

“Right, sorry,” Pewter mutters. “Date, what do you know about the surgery you went through at the start of your employment?”

As if without conscious thought, a hand jerks up to hover over the empty socket where an eye used to rest. “Not much?” He says. “I know they had to remove what was left of the optic nerve - they put in an artificial one instead of trying to salvage it.”

Pewter nods. “Yes, yes, exactly! And it is _that_ precise artificial nerve that will make what I am about to show you possible in the first place!” With a wide, sweeping gesture, Pewter flings a hand at the table, where a box rests; a small orb nestled inside it. Date leans forward to get a better look.

“...That’s an eye,” he notes.

“An _artificial_ eye,” Pewter says. “It will connect to the nerve implanted in your socket - and allow you to, once more, see out of both eyes again, in a sense.”

Date’s one remaining natural eye is wide - he looks from Shizue to Pewter like he’s expecting to be told this is a joke.

“We’re dead serious,” she reassures him. “You’re one of our best operatives, we can’t have you running around impaired if we can help it. Your missing eye is - forgive the pun - a massive blindspot for you. This will help.”

He’s silent, staring across at the box with an unreadable expression on his face.

“Well, Date?” Pewter’s nearly vibrating when he asks his question - he’s more excited for this than both Date and Shizue combined, and Shizue is pretty damn excited (though she’d never admit that). It makes sense, though - he’s proud of his work, as he should be. A lot of the base coding - the core of what made the AI-Ball function - might have come from the Wadjet System, but what Pewter had fine tuned on top of that base was incredible. “Do you want to try it out?”

“Will it hurt?”

“You may experience some slight discomfort,” Pewter admits, “and for the next few weeks, I will be observing you very closely - and expecting direct reports from you - to make sure there are no lingering or persisting side effects, but - no, Date.” His tone gentles, just a smidge. “It should not hurt at all.”

Date works his jaw. His fingers flex. “Okay,” he says, and nods. “Let’s do it.”

Pewter looks almost like he’s on the verge of letting out a whoop of celebration, but he maintains his composure. “Lean back,” he commands, and pulls on surgical gloves. “And try not to flinch - I need to make sure the nerve connects to the port correctly.”

Date nods, and leans back, and Pewter lifts up the AI-Ball carefully - like it’s made of glass that could shatter at any second, and not whatever military grade material Pewter could get his hands on. 

He spreads the lids of Date’s hollow socket and, slightly queasy, Shizue has to look away. She can handle blood and guts, she can handle corpses, but she can’t handle looking at hole in her friend’s face where an eye used to be. _Pathetic, Shizue._

“Okay,” Pewter says, soft and low. “Okay. Date, don’t open your eyes for a second.”

“Right,” Date says, and Shizue takes Pewter’s words as a signal that it’s okay to look back over at the scene.

Pewter’s attention is on his computers - biorhythms and connections and a dozen other programs Shizue doesn’t know how to read; Date remains reclined in his chair, expression peaceful, both eyes closed. His left eye is no longer obviously hollow - instead of the concave his lids formed, there’s something there pushing them out.

There’s an eye there, where there wasn’t before.

Something settles in Shizue’s stomach - not quite dread, not quite anticipation, not quite relief. Lights flicker across Pewter’s screens, scrolling into messages of lengthy code she wouldn’t know how to even _start_ comprehending, and some tension in Pewter relaxes.

“Okay,” he says. “I am about to activate the AI-Ball - Date, you will feel some momentary discomfort. If it breaks threshold into pain, or it lingers, you _must_ tell me at once, do you understand?”

“I understand.”

Pewter types a command into the console.

He hits _enter._

Date jolts in his seat, a sort of keening whine hissing out between his teeth before he slumps back, pressing a fist to his eye.

“One to ten, Date,” Pewter says, low and hurried. “Rate your - pain? Discomfort?”

“My _blegh,_ ” Date mumbles. “I don’t know… a three? Four?”

Pewter slumps, and collapses into his chair with a sigh of relief. “Oh, that’s good,” he breathes. “A four. We can work with a four.”

Date squints at him from where he’s hunched over his knees, natural eye watering, still covering his new artificial one. “Maybe you can, but _I_ can’t,” he hisses out. Pewter rolls his eyes.

“Date, I just activated a nerve leading directly to your brain,” he says. “It will take some time for everything to settle. If the pain doesn’t lessen within the next few hours - twenty-four, I’d say? - _then_ we worry. For now…” he reaches over to the table, to pick up a bottle of painkillers. He rattles it, and throws it at Date, who - even with his hand-eye coordination impaired - catches it easily. “Pop a few and get some rest,” he advises.

Date gives him a grunt of acknowledgement, and fumbles with one hand to try and unscrew the cap. He fails, of course, because it’s childproof, so Shizue rolls her eyes and walks over to open it for him. He shakes out two tablets, and swallows them dry.

“Go get him something to eat with that, maybe,” Pewter says, and then pauses. “Not coffee.”

“Gotcha,” Shizue says. “Come on, Date, up and at ‘em.”

“I,” he says, “need a minute.”

“You get twenty seconds.”

“While you’re engaging in this incredibly important exchange,” Pewter says, “be aware, Date, that the AI-Ball is not yet fully activated. You will not be able to see out of it just yet - this is just a test to see how well you respond to it being connected at all.” He waves a hand at the screen in front of him. “I’ll be keeping an eye on your waves, to make sure you remain stable. If all goes well, we should be able to actually turn it on tomorrow.”

“Peachy,” Date grumbles, and slowly, cautiously, removes his hand from where he was pressing it into his eye. Shizue has to just stop and stare at him for a moment, because after such a long period of time growing used to him with one eye, seeing him with another one throws her off.

It doesn’t look really look ‘normal’ - not quite activated yet; it’s a pure blank white. No iris, no pupil. 

“Well?” Date says. His voice cuts her out of her reverie - he’s noticed her staring. “How does it look?”

“Terrible,” Shizue says, without missing a beat. “Can you stand yet? I think we should get some food in you before the drugs knock you out.”

Date frowns, and pushes himself up on unsteady feet. “You told Kyoka I’d be able to come right back.”

“I lied.” She ducks under his arm, pulls him onto her a little. “Here - let me help you keep your balance.”

Date looks dubious. “If I fall,” he says. “We’re both going down; you know that, right?”

Shizue scoffs. “I can absolutely carry you to the cafeteria,” she says.

“No you can’t. I’m taller and heavier than you; we’d be on the floor in seconds.”

“Then _don’t fall,_ Date.”

“You say that like it’s _easy_ ,” he complains, and she raises a brow.

“Is it not?”

“I literally just had Pewter shove wires into my brain, or something,” he says, and grimaces. “ _You_ try keeping your equilibrium after doing that.”

She rolls her eyes. “Poor baby Date,” she teases. “Come on - let’s get moving.”

They take it slow - even have to take a few rest stops on their way there, where Date has to lean against a wall, close his eyes, grit his teeth and breathe deep through the migraine for a few minutes.

Shizue had been joking around, earlier, but now she’s feeling those first stirrings of genuine concern. “Maybe after you’ve eaten I’ll take you home,” she says. “We’ll call it a day early.”

“I’m… probably not going to be of much use around here for today,” Date admits. “Might not be a bad idea to try and sleep it off.”

Shizue waves a hand at him. “The drugs will do that anyway,” she reassures him. “I’m just thinking you’d probably rather be comatose in your bed than on a couch in an office.”

“You’re… not wrong,” Date admits, and sighs. After that, he’s mostly silent, even when Shizue dumps him into a seat at a table in the cafeteria, and goes hunting for some food not even he can turn his nose up at.

He finds a way to complain anyway.

“I hate mayo,” he grumbles, and Shizue fixes a bright smile onto her face.

“Eat your sandwich, Date,” she says. “I paid for it. For you, it’s free food. Don’t turn down free food.”

He eats, but he isn’t happy about it. He chews with a disgruntled look on his face; his jaw moving slowly. Shizue frowns. “Is it hurting?” She taps at her cheek, just underneath her left eye.

Date shrugs. “Not any worse than it was before.”

“Maybe I should have gotten you soup.”

He shrugs again. “It’s fine,” he says. “You’re worrying for nothing.” She can’t see his mouth when he raises his sandwich up to take a bite, but the way his eyes scrunch up tells her he’s smiling. “It’s nice to know you worry, though. Especially since you look so much cuter with that little crinkle between your eyes - ”

Under the table, Shizue kicks him. “Don’t speak with your mouth full,” she warns. “It’s disgusting.” She pauses. “And don’t call me cute. I don’t want to hear that from you. It’s even more disgusting than looking at the half-chewed food in your mouth.”

Date snorts, and swallows. “You know, just because you’re old enough to be my mother, doesn’t mean you have to act like one.”

Shizue contemplates kicking him again, but harder this time. And higher. Somewhere it would _really_ hurt. 

Hayato had always teased her about it, too - those few months of age she’d had on him; just shy of a full year. She’d punched him for it, the first time the words _old hag_ had come out of his mouth, and ended up getting harshly reprimanded. That’s when she and Hayato had become friends, really - he’d taken at least half the fall for her, by admitting he’d provoked her. It had become a sort of inside joke between just the two of them.

It feels different coming from Kaname Date, and not just because none of the memories _she_ holds of their time together exist inside his head.

Saito Sejima is a bit over a decade younger than her, and his face looks even younger still; as if he was a teenager, just shedding the last of his youth to step into the adult world. Date would kill her, probably (or at least try to), if she called him baby-faced, but that’s what he _was_. 

There was no way they could make Kaname Date the same age as Hayato Yagyu, not when he barely passed for Saito Sejima’s actual age. 

Right now, Shizue’s feeling that gap more than usual - the world is topsy-turvy as a familiar joke becomes an unfamiliar jab.

Date’s watching her, no longer eating. “Boss?” He asks. “You okay?” Concern flickers to life in his face. “You know I was joking, right - you’re not actually old. I’m sorry? Don’t be mad.” He sounds nervous. She wonders what horror stories he’s heard from the other ABIS workers about her that’s got him tense like this.

And isn’t _that_ a depressing thought.

Shizue shakes herself back into reality. “I’m not mad,” she says, but avoids his gaze. She sighs. “Eat your sandwich, Date.”

She just wants to go home.

-x-

Date sleeps for almost twenty-four hours. It’s as impressive as it is worrying.

> what the hell were those drugs you gave him??
> 
> just regular painkillers? 
> 
> regular. Right.
> 
> slightly stronger than your over-the-counter fare, to be sure, but nothing that should induce a coma  
> perhaps he just needed some rest, boss
> 
> not very reassuring, pewter

He sends her back a shrugging emoji, and Shizue contemplates throwing her phone at the wall. Hell, maybe that would even _help_ \- Date can sleep through the _weirdest_ , loudest things, but still spring bright-eyed and bushy tailed out of bed the moment something goes _bang_.

An assassin’s instincts, she supposes.

> are you even keeping an eye on whatever goddamn feedback that eye is meant to be giving you??
> 
> yes  
> it hurts that you would doubt me  
> he’s running stable  
> all waves keeping within safety thresholds  
> all connections within predicted percentiles  
> when he wakes up, depending on his direct feedback, i think we will be ready to introduce him to aiba
> 
> you mean, give him a heart attack
> 
> this was your idea, boss. I was going to tell him about aiba before i ever made to implant the AI-Ball
> 
> yeah, because you don’t know what fun is.
> 
> rude

Shizue rolls her eyes, and tosses her phone - onto the couch next to her, not the wall (as tempting as the idea is). She really _should_ have gone into work hours earlier - but she can’t just leave Date alone in their apartment, can she? Of course not. That’s one nice thing about being the commander, she supposes; no one gets to tell her what to do.

(With a few exceptions, she admits to herself, but they generally don’t matter. The last time they’d reached out to her had been the start of the whole Date problem, and the time before that had been when they’d offered her her job. With luck, she’d never hear from any of them again during her time leading ABIS.)

She’s on her fourth cup of coffee (decaf, _thanks, Pewter_ ) and thinking about maybe grabbing a bite to eat when Date finally stumbles out of his room, sleep rumpled and looking confused as to what reality he finds himself in.

“What the hell was in those drugs,” he mumbles, and Shizue offers him her lukewarm, half empty mug. He takes it anyway, and chugs it with a grimace.

“Pewter says they were just regular heavy duty painkillers,” she says, “but I’m pretty sure he slipped you elephant tranquilizers.”

“Sure _feels_ like he did.” Date groans, and collapses onto the couch next to her. “Why is there a phone under me?”

“Because I’m psychic,” Shizue quips. “I knew you were going to sit there, and I like to cause you pain.”

Date snorts, and exerts the bare minimum effort required to dig her phone out of his back. His eyes don’t open once. “Sure you are.”

Since he can’t see her, Shizue lets the fond smile she can feel growing spread across her face, for just a moment. She’s finally, finally starting to see Date as his ‘own person,’ technically, but sometimes she can’t help but regress to thinking of everything in him that reminds her of Hayato, hungrily looking and deeper and deeper for even more of those fractured pieces. In this moment out of time, Saito Sejima’s face isn’t part of the equation. It’s like they’re rookies again, collapsed without care on top of each other after an all-nighter patrolling one of the shittier routes. Date even sprawls like Hayato did - taking up all the space, leaving none for Shizue.

She lets the smiles slip away, and reaches over to nudge him ‘awake.’

One eye - the natural one - opens, and he glares at her. _“What?”_

“Sucks to be you,” Shizue agrees easily. “We need to get you to Pewter. Like he said yesterday - he didn’t actually activate the eye, not really. He just connected it.”

Date whines, looking like he desperately wishes he’d never left his bedroom. Well, too bad for him: it’s too late to go crawling back into bed now.

She fixes them both a quick bite to eat; toast, with just a bit of butter, nevermind that it technically isn’t a reasonable hour for breakfast, anymore. Date’s still eating his with slow, careful bites when they walk out of the apartment door - he’d spent at least fifteen minutes fumbling with uncooperative limbs, slow reflexes, and the contents of his wardrobe.

“You could have _helped_ , you know,” he points out to her, but Shizue waves him off.

“You’re a big boy,” she dismisses. “If you need my help to get dressed, you’re just pathetic. Are you pathetic, Date?”

He frowns at her. “Sometimes, you make me feel like I am.”

“I make everyone feel like that. It’s a gift!”

Their drive is careful - slower than it would usually be; not as slow as the one home the day before. Date’s not quite _as_ bad off as he was; he still winces every time they go over a speed bump or a pothole. The tension working in his jaw is so clear Shizue’s almost amazed he hasn’t broken any teeth from gritting them together so hard.

He breathes a sigh of relief when she finally slows the car to a stop, parking in her usual spot in the station’s carpark. As he climbs out of the car, one hand comes up to press to the left side of his face; Pewter had told her it was expected that he’d be achy in more places than _just_ the eye for a while.

 _It’s all connected to the brain; and the nerves in the face are all closely connected,_ he’d said. _It would be simple for them to get caught up in a - sort of feedback loop. It’s part of why an injury somewhere on the face, such as a toothache or broken nose, can cause migraines!_

The trip to Pewter’s lab is almost identical to the one they’d taken the day before, leaving it, except Date can actually walk under his own power this time. Still, Shizue is aware that he’s not having the greatest day, and she’s nothing if not a benevolent boss, and so she graciously pushes the control room door open for him when they reach it. Date offers her a tight smile of thanks, and steps inside.

Pewter is immediately upon him, and Shizue can see in Date’s expression the exact moment instinctive panic has twitchy fingers reaching for a weapon he doesn’t have as feet take two steps back and spread into a ready stance.

“What _are_ you doing?” Pewter pulls himself back, just a little, and reigns in the excess of his excitement to squint at Date with a baffled question in his eyes. “Nevermind that - do you have _any_ idea how long I have been waiting for you to turn up here?”

“It could have been anywhere from a few hours to a century,” Date says, flat and dry. “What the hell was in those painkillers you gave me, again?”

Pewter’s squint dips into a glare. “I _told_ Boss - they were just normal painkillers! Medical grade! Nothing even close to what you’d be dosed with for surgery; you just must have been extra susceptible to the drowsy side effect.”

“Don’t have Date operate heavy machinery while drugged, got it,” Shizue murmurs, and Date shoots her a frown alongside Pewter’s answering smirk.

“ _Or_ psync machinery,” he says, and adjusts his visor. Date’s frown deepens.

“Are we here to trash talk me, or do something actually important?”

Pewter clears his throat. “Ah - right,” he says. “Date, if you would; take a seat, please?”

Date lowers himself into the chair Pewter offers easily enough, but his grip on the arms are tight. He remembers the pain from yesterday; still feels it, probably.

Pewter sees his tension as easily as Shizue herself does, and makes his expression and voice gentle, like he’s talking to a jumpy cat. “This time you really won’t feel anything,” he reassures. “The connection yesterday went perfectly - today it’s just activation.” He pauses, and gains a considering tint to his expression, his voice. “I suppose you may feel some disorientation from regaining vision in your right eye, but I imagine that would pass swiftly; as soon as your body readjusted.”

Hand over the enter bar, code unfurled on the screen and ready to be executed, Pewter shoots Date one last considering look. “Are you ready, Date? You may want to close your eyes, at first.”

Date nods, just once, and obligingly slides his eyes shut. “I’m ready,” he says.

Pewter lets out one long, whistling breath through his teeth. He presses down.

The code on the screen moves - extra lines appearing, fast enough that Shizue has no hope of being able to read them, even if she _could_ understand them; Pewter’s eyes track their content and progress with single minded focus, and she can see from his expression and posture that, so far, nothing’s gone wrong. No complications.

She wants to sigh with relief, but she doesn’t let herself release that tension - not yet. Not just yet. Not until she _knows_ , for _sure_ , that this has worked. That is hasn’t all been for nothing.

“What the _fuck,”_ Date whispers, in the kind of tone that told Shizue if he had the presence of mind available to be screaming, he’d be screaming.

She grins, watching his mouth fall open, and still watching his screens, Pewter lights up like the sun.

“It worked,” he says. “She _works!”_

 _“She,”_ Date squeaks, and both of his eyes fly open. The AI-Ball - Aiba - is no longer a pure blank white in his socket; all the features of a natural eye are there, looking bizarrely organic bar one thing: the colour of the iris; a pale electrum.

She frowns. “I thought I told you to match the colours,” she says, and Pewter shrugs.

“She was made to be as human as possible,” he says, looking awed. “She asked to choose her own colour scheme. I saw no reason to deny her; even if she were to choose a wildly different colour, heterochromia _does_ exist.”

“I know that!” Shizue protests. “But we’re going to have to redo every piece of ID we’ve given him up until now, you _do_ realise that, don’t you?”

Pewter shrugs again, but before she can say more, Date interjects.

 _“Hey,”_ he says. “Why is my eye _talking to me.”_

Pewter smiles, soft and proud and fond. “That’s Aiba,” he says - boasts, really. “I made her.”

“An AI for an eye,” Shizue explains, and chuckles to herself internally. 

“She will be - your partner,” Pewter says. “Personal computer and personal companion; she is both.”

Date makes a face, looking torn between disbelief, discomfort, and annoyance. “Why didn’t you tell me that was going to happen? That - that she existed?”

For the first time since they walked into the room, Pewter looks unhappy. “Boss made me promise not to.”

“I wanted to see the look on your face,” Shizue admits, shameless and unapologetic. “I thought it would be funny.” She grins. “It was, if you were wondering.”

“I hate you,” Date says, with feeling. “Both of you.” Something flickers across his expression - a shocked distraction. “Correction,” he says, voice distant. “All _three_ of you.” He looks over at Pewter. “Can’t you… get rid of her? Make it so that it’s just a prosthetic eye.”

Pewter looks horrified, like Date had just asked him to commit murder - or blasphemy.

“Denied,” Shizue says, while her engineer is still speechless. “Even if Pewter would butcher his work for the sake of your comfort - which he _would not_ , so keep that in mind for future reference - I wouldn’t let him. He wasn’t joking when he said Aiba was your partner. She’s registered and everything.” She’s also a registered therapy companion, not that Date needs to know that. “She’ll be useful to you, Date,” she insists, and he sighs.

 _“Fine.”_ He concedes defeat, if not graciously, at least not shamefully. “I’ll just...work on getting used to her.”

Shizue smiles. “That’s the spirit!”

-x-

For all Date’s initial - and lingering, because he’s _stubborn_ like that - dislike of Aiba, the two of them soon fall into a natural rhythm that leaves Shizue feeling somewhat lonely in her own apartment. It’s like having a third roommate, one she can’t talk to or see - or like her roommate has suddenly gained a girlfriend he’s sneaking in each night, sneaking out each morning, and then spending the rest of the day on the phone with her anyway.

That comparison got away from her somewhere, but she doesn’t quite know _where_.

They talk to each other almost constantly, she knows. Silently, too; after the first few hours of listening to one side of a bickered argument, Shizue had threatened to cut out Date’s tongue if he didn’t shut up. He had, for the most part, taken her threat as she’d want him to: at face value. He’d immediately gotten better at regulating how he was talking to Aiba around her, not counting a few slip ups where the words were spoken aloud anyway.

The other psyncers had been amazed by Aiba - well, by the AI-Ball, at least. They knew Date had been given a working prosthetic eye, paid for by ABIS funds to be used for ABIS cases. They didn’t know about Aiba; until Pewter had finished compiling a report for the higher ups, no one else would know about Aiba - and even after that, no one outside of ABIS would know about her. She knows that Date’s looking forward to the day Aiba is even just a _little_ declassified, because he’s extraordinarily bad at watching his own tongue when Aiba really gets into it with him, and a concerned Mio has asked if there are any possible side effects to connecting a prosthetic eye more than once.

Shizue had told Date as much through tears of laughter. He hadn’t even had the opportunity to snap back at her, because Aiba had immediately berated him too, and he’d gotten distracted bickering with her.

For all their arguing, though, Date seems happier, and Pewter reports that Aiba is pleased with her assignment, too; automated reports from her on Date’s oxytocin dosage come through daily, and so far his moods - regulated only by a shot in the dark before - have stabilised significantly. Shizue lets herself feel relief, and finally lets go of that weight she’s been feeling press down on her incessantly.

“And you’re _sure_ she won’t bring it up to Date?” She asks Pewter, one morning when they’re in the psync room alone together; no psyncers around today, with the machine undergoing maintenance. “You said - the way you designed her, she’d grow with him. Change. If she ends up getting close enough to Date that she’s more loyal to _him_ than _us_ \- ”

Pewter waves her off, pen between his teeth, gaze on the screen of the laptop he balances on his knees but attention on her. “Aiba is something special,” he agrees, and there’s no ignoring that smug undertone, “but she _is_ still an AI. She has some autonomy, to be true, but she still cannot work outside of the bounds of her code, no matter what horror movies would lead you to believe, Boss.” He glances at her, just once, quickly; reassuring. “Unless Date, with prior knowledge, directly questions her about it, she will not say anything to him. And even if she did somehow manage to mutate her own code in such a way - she has no knowledge beyond that which we have given her: that Date has an oxytocin deficiency.”

“True,” Shizue admits, not quite reassured, but knowing enough to know that there’s not really anything she can do about that. It’s just her irrational, illogical, _human_ feelings of paranoia. She sighs. “You good here?”

“I always am,” Pewter says mildly. “I am not sure why you came down here to bother me. You are only required in this room when we are running a psync.” He squints at her. “You’re working to get that changed, are you not?”

“I’m working to get you permanent admin power relating to just psyncing,” Shizue says. “And to get the psyncers the same, if conditionally - the psync machine is the whole reason ABIS exists at all. I get that it needs security checks, but no department should hinge solely on the presence of one person; it’s ridiculous. We’re already teaching the psyncers how to operate the machine by themselves, anyway.” It’s true: Pewter had suggested it, theorising that a better understanding of just how a psync worked could help them with navigating somnia, and Shizue had okayed it, seeing the logic in it.

Having other people in the building know how to engage an emergency psync shutdown hadn’t seemed like a bad idea, either; just in case someway, somehow, both Shizue and Pewter were suddenly unable to do so themselves after a psync was already under way. 

Mio was taking to it like a duck takes to water, and Shizue wonders if Pewter was slightly intimidated by her - she knew she was, a little bit, even if she’d never say it aloud. No one should be _that_ perfect; yet, somehow, Mio was. Her only real flaw was her terrible bedside manner, as far as Shizue knew - admittedly, the two of them weren’t exactly _close_ , however.

Kyoka was dealing with the lessons like she dealt with just about everything else Shizue had ever seen her undertake: with a lot of stress and crying, but eventually making progress. She still wasn’t really sure how Kyoka had managed to pass the psychological tests that allowed her into ABIS in the first place, her anxiety was _that_ bad, but Shizue supposes high psync compatibility rates speak for themselves, when people who can even withstand a test psync activation are practically one in a _billion_.

Eiji was doing fine, as long as Pewter bit his tongue on all the technical jargon he wanted to gush about, and just laid out his instructions in strict terms of _these are the buttons you will press, in this order, in this situation, and this is what they will do._ This doesn’t surprise Shizue. If Mio was perfection, and Kyoka was gradual progress, Eiji was an easy cruise. She’d never known him to be a problem, really; he had the highest psync failure score of any of their current psyncers, true, but he was, next to Mio, their most efficient in clearing somnia in the cases where the psync _did_ connect.

Date just cheated; he had Aiba to talk him through the process now. Shizue was contemplating having him run through it, anyway - sans Aiba - but even she had to admit that wasting so much time he could be using to actually work on lessons he didn’t _actually_ need was probably an abuse of power. 

“You’re thinking too loud,” Pewter says, cutting through her reverie. “If you’re done talking to me, Boss, could you please leave? I’m sure you have more work waiting for you somewhere else - or some other subordinates to annoy.”

She grins at him, but makes to leave the room without protest. “If you wanted me to leave you alone so you could bring out the BL, you could have just said so!” She calls over her shoulder, and the doors slide shut behind her just as the sounds of Pewter’s offended, protesting sputters reach her ears.

In the empty halls, Shizue laughs, and feels a distant equilibrium reestablish itself after months of an off kilter existence.

Everything’s changed, and yet, somehow…

_Somehow._

With this new normal slowly, finally, settling into itself…

… it all feels the same.

 _Home_ , Shizue muses. This comfort, this surety of herself and what she’s doing. That’s what home is.

_Home is what she’s found, here, once again, after thinking for such a long time that she’d lost everything._

-x-

Spring kills the snow, and brings with it another killer: the blossoms reviving themselves on branches the cold had stripped bare.

“Whoa, you okay?” Date frowns at her over his morning coffee as Shizue slumps into their kitchen counter, and Shizue sniffles.

“Fucking _pollen,”_ she snarls, and rubs at her itching nose.

 **_Hayfever,_ ** Aiba’s voice echoes out, tinny and distant, from her phone’s speaker; an incoming call that Shizue had never answered, or even heard ringing. Sometimes, Aiba terrifies her. **_Boss is currently experiencing an adverse reaction to an increase of pollen in the air._ **

“Thank you, Aiba,” Shizue says, voice sounding stuffed and nasally even to her own ears, “for that incredibly needed breakdown.”

 **_You are welcome,_ ** Aiba says, and damn near preens, because she either hasn’t gotten sarcasm down yet (untrue. Shizue has heard how she sasses Date) or just doesn’t think it applies to her when she wants to hear a compliment instead. **_I think Date should drive the two of you into work this morning. Boss’ vision and olfactory senses are currently impaired. It could be dangerous for her to get behind the wheel._ **

Shizue freezes. Date freezes.

 _“What?”_ He says.

“Can Date even _drive?”_

He sends her a wounded look, the pout’s effect lessened by his scowl, and Aiba responds to Shizue, while ignoring Date. **_Date holds the necessary legal papers to allow him behind the wheel of a vehicle in the weight range of your car, Boss._ **

There isn’t really a correct way to say _well, yes, but when we were filling out all his fake identification, we didn’t really stop to think if he actually remembered the skill to back his license up,_ so Shizue doesn’t. Instead, she narrows her eyes at Date. “Have you ever driven?”

He looks offended. “Of course I have,” he says. “What kind of question is that?”

“A reasonable one! Do you have any idea how much my car cost me?”

Date rolls his eyes.

 **_If you do not wish for Date to drive you in, Boss,_ ** Aiba says, helpfully, **_simply allow me to link up to your car’s wireless systems, and I can -_ **

_“Neither of you are driving my car!”_

-x-

Shizue’s almost forgotten about her lack of faith in Date’s driving skills when a request comes in through official channels - an operative, requesting funds for a purchase related to ABIS work.

Unlike other departments, what counts as ‘needed for work’ in ABIS covers an incredibly wide margin, and so, sighing, Shizue clicks to the detailed report, ready to scroll through another twenty page document of someone trying to explain just _why_ they need a three door smart fridge installed in their house in order to complete work efficiently.

To her surprise, the request is from Date, who she hadn’t been sure actually knew enough about all the intricacies of ABIS bureaucracy to know he could even send in such an application in the first place; Mio or Pewter must have helped him with it.

To her surprise, the request is about a car.

She’s immediately reaching for her phone, and scrolling through her contacts until she hits ‘H.’ She presses ‘call’ on Date’s number.

He - or, well, Aiba - picks up on the third ring. _“Boss?”_

“Just got your requisition,” she says in place of a greeting. “What do you mean, _car?”_

Date snorts. _“I mean I’d like to stop relying on taxis, you, or my own two feet to get me to places,”_ he says. _“I wasn’t going to do anything about it, but last week - I was running a case with Mio, remember?”_

“I remember.”

_“She got sick of playing chauffeur to me, said it was cutting down our effective investigation time. When I told her I didn’t exactly have any other options, she shoved a stack of forms at me and told me to apply. So, that’s what I’m doing.”_

Shizue has no honest idea about why this has her so upset. It’s the smart choice, really, and she’s kind of annoyed that she didn’t think about it sooner.

That doesn’t mean she wants him to _do it._ “Do you even have any idea what kind of car you’re looking at purchasing? I can’t sign off on ABIS funds being given out for a car that doesn’t exist, Date.”

_“Did you even read the whole form yet, Boss?”_

**_Ignore Date,_ ** Aiba interjects, and Shizue starts. She’d forgotten that Aiba was, of course, a permanent third party in any call anyone had with Date. **_He is being defensive, and deliberately antagonistic._ ** She pauses, and it’s weird, sometimes, just how human Pewter made her. There’s no reason for her to stop talking in that moment beyond simple human consideration. **_He is right, though._ ** Her tone is gentle, like she isn’t sure how Shizue will take what she’s saying (like she thinks Shizue is _fragile)_ . **_At the back of the form - we listed several models we looked at directly, as well as the dealership they currently reside in._ **

_“Is that everything you wanted, Boss?”_

“I - ” Shizue starts, stops, and cuts herself off. “Yes,” she says. “Sorry for calling you like that without reading the whole form, I - I’ve had a bad day.”

On the other end of the line, Date hesitates. _“You want to talk about it?”_

“No, but thank you for asking!” She makes sure her tone is bright. Nearly painfully so. “I’ll sign off on your requisition. Aiba, you’ll get a notification when the funds are available to you, so make sure Date spends the money on a car, and _nothing else.”_

 **_Affirmative,_ ** Aiba says, either ignoring or deaf to the outraged cry of protest Date lets out. **_Good day, Boss._ **

The call disconnects. For once, Shizue is glad she didn’t end up being the one to get the last word; she feels like she just made herself look like a massive idiot over a very reasonable - and smart - idea.

 _Two steps forward, one step back._ Everytime she feels like she’s making progress towards accepting that _this is just your life now, Shizue, this is reality_ something happens - something that spikes up that bitterness, that fear and buried grief, and she feels herself regressing.

“Get a grip, Shizue,” she sighs. “It’s just a car.”

She texts Pewter about it, because even if she has enough control she won’t allow herself to _vent_ , she needs to at least feel like she’s bitched about it a little, and he’s about the closest thing to a confidant she has left in this world.

He sends back a car emoji followed by several lines of exclamation points.

> what???
> 
> BOSS THIS IS  
> PERFECT  
> JUST WHAT I’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR  
> THE MISSING PIECE!!
> 
> ???

No answer. She puts her phone down, frustrated, and forces her attention back to her work.

None of the men in her life make any damn sense.

-x-

It doesn’t take too long to find out just why Pewter was so excited by the prospect of Date getting a car - the moment it’s signed into his name and he’s driven it to ABIS, Pewter has taken it over. For what? Shizue doesn’t know, just yet; Date hadn’t stuck around long enough to question him - he’d run straight to Shizue to complain, like a kid running to his mother to tell on his sibling in for hogging his brand new toy.

That’s a terrible thought. _Why did you think that, Shizue?_

She’s no parent; she shoves that thought into a box in the back of her mind where it belongs and vows to never touch it again.

“Pewter!” Her call echoes out into the mild air of the carpark, and Pewter calls back his location automatically. Her eyes track to the direction his voice came from, and she immediately heads over to what must be Date’s new car, Date at her heels.

“Ah, Boss!” He smiles at her, lit up in a way she hasn’t seen since his first successes with Aiba. For a moment, it gives her pause, but she recovers quickly.

“What are you doing to Date’s car, Pewter?”

“Butchering it,” Date mutters. He sounds like he’s about to cry. Shizue ignores him, and raises an expectant brow at Pewter, who sighs at her.

“This is something I’ve been thinking about since Aiba was in the development stages,” he says, “but I never brought it up, because I know if I’d suggested doing it to _your_ car, you would have killed me.”

 _“I’ll_ kill you,” Date hisses out. Shizue kicks her leg back at him.

“And what is it, exactly?”

“A portable charging station,” Pewter says, eyes brightening once more as he falls back into his groove. “Date could plug Aiba in as he drives - and then, the energy produced by the drive would charge her.” He looks past Shizue, over her shoulder, to frown at Date. “I get daily reports on Aiba’s performance, you know. You’re not charging her nearly frequently enough. Daily, Date, you should be charging her _daily;_ you need to take _care_ of her. She’s your partner.”

Date simply scowls at him. “Yeah, and that’s my _car.”_

“What’s more important to you: your car, or Aiba?”

An expression crosses Date’s face like he’s actually considering it, but Shizue knows him well enough to know he’s just being a goddamn idiot. If he was actually thinking about it, anyway, Aiba would have called him out for it by now - they hadn’t been together for all that long a time, but Shizue knew that under all the thorns, Date had a genuine fondness for Aiba. Even if he was complete shit at showing it.

Pewter would generally have the insight to see that, too, but this is Pewter with his ‘new project!’ blinders on. He wouldn’t have the insight to not get in a shower with socks on, right now.

“Stop bickering with Date,” she says. “He got this car for a reason, you know, and it isn’t so you can play around with it.”

Pewter sends her a wounded look. “But - ”

She holds up a hand to cut him off. “I’m not saying you can’t mod his car,” she says, and swings her leg back for another kick before Date can so much as open his mouth to take a breath. “I’m saying you can’t take _forever_ to mod his car. How long will this take you?”

“Hmm...a week?” Pewter says, head tilted thoughtfully, after a moment of consideration.

“You get twenty-four hours.”

-x-

Pewter doesn’t get it done in twenty-four hours. He gets it done in forty-one, and every hour that turns over past Shizue’s original deadline is an hour in which she has to put up with Date’s increasingly bad mood. At the very least, she doesn’t have to worry about him bitching at _her_ \- she doesn’t pity Aiba, though.

When he’s done, Date drags Shizue with him to check over every inch of his car to _make sure Pewter hasn’t broken it,_ even though Shizue knows about cars about as much as she knows about Aiba’s functions - which is to say she knows they exist, but that’s about it.

“It looks fine to me,” she comments, tone mild, standing back a bit as she watches Date peer over every inch of the leather seats. “It’ll probably run better, too.”

 **_Look, look!_ ** Aiba sounds excited. **_In the wheel, Date - that’s my charging station._ **

Pausing in his inspection, Date turns his attention to the part of the car Aiba had highlighted for him. “How,” he begins, “am I meant to honk a horn when my wheel no longer has one?”

 **_You can honk me,_ ** Aiba suggests brightly - Shizue bites her lip to stop the laughter that climbs up her throat dead in its tracks, and is suddenly very thankful not only to Date for dragging her out of her office, but to Aiba for having the courtesy to speak aloud through the car’s speaker system, and not just directly into Date’s mind.

“No, I can’t,” Date argues. “You don’t honk, Aiba.”

 **_I am capable of vocalising a wide range of sounds,_ ** Aiba says. **_A car horn is nothing to me._ ** A deafening sound blares out.

“That’s a _foghorn,_ Aiba!”

**_Oops._ **

“Can you do screams?” Shizue asks, curious, and Date glares at her over his shoulder.

“Don’t _corrupt_ her,” he complains. “She’s bad enough without you giving her ideas.”

 **_I_ ** **will** **_electrocute you,_ ** Aiba hisses, and Date rolls his eyes.

“Do you _want_ to live permanently in the wheel of my car?”

“As fascinating as this byplay is,” Shizue interjects, “some of us have actual _work_ we need to get done today. Are you finished here? Can I leave?”

Date has the grace to look abashed, at least. “I guess?” He says. “I was kind of. Hoping to take you on a drive, though.”

Shizue has to take a moment to process that. _“Why?”_

He pouts at her. “To prove to you that I _can_ drive!”

“Date, oh my god. Are you serious? Are you being serious, right now?” She shakes her head. “Listen - I assure you. I believe you. I have complete faith that you can drive a car.”

“Then it shouldn’t be such a big deal to get into one with when I’m driving, right?”

“I said I had faith that you could drive. Not that I had faith you could drive _well.”_

 **_Boss makes a very valid point,_ ** Aiba says. **_Your skills are passable, at best._ **

“You’re both terrible,” Date says. “Neither of you are my friend.”

“Of course not,” Shizue says, and winks. “I’m your _boss.”_

 **_And I am your partner,_ ** Aiba agrees. **_Friendship is not an essential component of our relationship. Your attempt at emotional manipulation has fallen flat._ **

Date sighs, and lets the subject drop - he’s clearly sensed his loss. Shizue makes her way back to her office with a wave, before Date can start pressing the matter of going for a drive again -

D - it would take a miracle for her to be willing to get in a car Date was driving, and they’re pretty short on miracles right now. It’s just an average day in the life of Shizue Kuranushi, and it follows suit for the rest of ABIS.

The new normal established, it finally settles in on itself.

-x-

Weeks pass. Months pass, and summer is upon them in a blaze of heat Shizue is appreciative of, whenever she actually gets time away from ABIS, buried underground. As the temperature spikes up, so does crime.

Mio yawns as she hands Shizue the file for her latest case - the third one she’s closed this week; all mostly small-time, but still highly exhausting. 

“You could have just emailed this to me, you know?” She says conversationally, opening the file and turning through its pages as Mio rolls her shoulders.

Mio shakes her head. “It’s bad for your eyes to just stare at a screen for hours on end,” she says firmly. “The files are of course in the system, if you want to search them up later, but I thought it might be a nice break for your eyes to read through a hard copy, for once.”

“Well, thanks for thinking of me,” Shizue says, touched even as she thinks Mio is being a little silly. Her eyesight is _fine._

Mio nods, just once. “Speaking of thinking of you,” she says. “This isn’t work related, by the way - are you free this weekend?”

Shizue raises a brow at her. “You asking me out?”

Mio’s a fairly stoic character - not quite _all work, no play,_ but with a distinct lack of frivolity in her day to day life during business hours; still, Shizue knows there’s a real person in there, as much as she likes to hide it, and that’s evident in the slight upwards twitch her lips give before she catches herself and smoothes her face into pure, controlled neutrality. “No,” she says. _You wish,_ Shizue can tell she’s thinking. “There’s a summer festival being held locally - nothing big, but there’s going to be fireworks. We’re going as a group; would you like to come?”

Shizue frowns. “Date never mentioned this to me.”

If Mio had been anyone else, she probably would have snorted. “It’s _Date.”_

“Okay, fair point,” Shizue allows. It mollifies her, to think that her invitation coming from Mio was more an example of her roommate being an idiot than him - for some reason - deliberately snubbing her. “I’m free this weekend; it sounds nice.” It really does. Shizue can’t remember the last time she went to any sort of festival, she must have been - god, in her twenties?

Ugh. She’s _old._

She makes sure to smile at Mio. “I’ll be there,” she promises, “just text me the details, okay?”

One final nod, and Mio’s out the door. The moment it’s shut behind her, Shizue is pulling her phone out from the drawer she keeps it in when she’s in her office.

> date you ASS
> 
> what  
> what’d i do this time
> 
> you were just going to ditch me this weekend!!  
> where was MY festival invite??
> 
> ah, fuck  
> i knew i was forgetting something  
> AIBA WHY DIDN’T YOU REMIND ME
> 
> Was I supposed to do that?
> 
> literally what are you good for 
> 
> I am NOT your personal assistant.  
> You have a memory, might I suggest using it?
> 
> did that hurt, date? I hope it hurt.
> 
> boss i am SORRY  
> here give me a sec  
> would you like to come to a festival with me this weekend?
> 
> i’d love to, but unfortunately, you’ve asked a bit too late ):  
> mio is my date! \o/
> 
> well  
> congrats?
> 
> you don’t seem very enthused
> 
> mio scares me  
> you scare me  
> the idea of the two of you together scares me

Startled by his clearly honest admission, Shizue can’t help the laughter that breaks out, ringing out in quiet giggles. Before she locks her phone away once more and turns her attention back to her work, she sends just one final message to Date.

> good :)

-x-

Mio is, thankfully, very clear on the details of the festival night, because Date is (as usual) about as helpful as a wet paper towel when you’re trying to dry up a spill.

“Rude,” Date tells her, but doesn’t really try to defend himself, because he knows he can’t. She’s right. He’s got just the one eye, now, with Aiba docked in her charging station before their night out. He usually doesn’t take her out to plug her in until he’s about to go to sleep, but they’ll likely be out late tonight.

“How about instead of criticising me, you go get ready, hmm?” She says, and shoos him off. “Mio was very clear about the dress code.”

Date makes a face, but he wanders off to his room without protest - hopefully to put on the yukata Mio had picked out for him. She’d offered to get one for Shizue, too, but she’d turned her down - she has her own, even if she hasn’t worn it in approximately… forever. It still fits perfectly, bright red petals scattered across the cloth only slightly faded.

Date steps out in gradient purple, still wearing a turtleneck even under his yukata, and raises a brow at her. It’s another weird quirk of the body that he’s inherited - Hayato had always worn necklines so low it was amazing he’d never gotten in trouble for public indecency, but it seems like Saito Sejima preferred to be covered head to toe, right up his throat. “It’s always been black and red with you, huh?”

“Why change a good aesthetic?” Shizue shrugs. “They were my school colours, back in the day. I liked them.”

“They suit you,” Date says, and offers her his arm. 

She laughs. “You do realise we’re just going down to the garage, right? To take our _separate_ cars?”

“Then you get to enjoy the experience of being escorted by me for five minutes,” he says. “Come on, Boss, play along.”

If it had been Hayato - truly Hayato - beside her right now, she would have slipped in an innuendo here, but even after all these months, her relationship with Date just isn’t quite at that point; he still screws up his face in that same affronted expression Hayato had made at her until they’d known each other for years. It’s amusing, sometimes, to rile him up, but it also just hurts, too.

She takes his arm. “Lead on,” she says. He’s warm, next to her, and tall enough that she has to tilt her head back to meet his eyes. He smells like cotton and her shampoo - he’s been stealing it again; she _knew_ the bottle was going way too fast.

She doesn’t have a chance to call him out on it before he’s tugging her out into the hall and out of her thoughts. Shizue stumbles, and using Date as a balance, quickly steadies herself.

“I’m not used to wearing yukata,” she defends herself, even though he hadn’t asked. “My legs are usually freer than this.”

Date snorts. “Oh, I know,” he says. She rams her elbow into his side.

The evening air is warm, when they step outside. Date tilts his head back, and looks up at the sky.

“I haven’t seen fireworks before,” he muses. “Not in person - at least, not in memory.”

“What little of it you have,” Shizue agrees, around the sharp pang in her heart that speaks of drunken summer nights with her in their youth. “This will be special, then. You looking forward to it?”

He blinks, and smiles down at her. “Absolutely,” he says.

-x-

The festival is a fairly small one, but there are still a wide variety of stalls set up for people to wander around - games and activities children tug parents to squashed right up to stalls where teenagers and adults alike line up for cheap festival food.

Shizue makes a beeline for the cotton candy. Date rolls his eyes, but follows after her. He nabs two sticks, and she sends him a questioning look as she tears into her own. “You got a craving for sugar, there?”

“Nah, Kyoka has a sweet tooth,” he says. “But - look at the lines at those things.” He gestures back at the stalls. “You think she’s going to even _think_ about going near them?”

He’s right. Pondering on it, Shizue can’t imagine Kyoka being able to order her own food in an otherwise empty cafe, let alone attempting to wait in a line a dozen or so people long while being jostled by elbows and screams on all sides. “Sweet of you,” she says.

“That’s the cotton candy talking. Do you know the way to where Mio said they were setting up?”

She does, and takes the lead - a little way removed from the chaos of the festival stalls themselves, but not so far that the sounds have died out, Mio and the others wait, chatting quietly on a picnic blanket someone had brought to spread out on the grass.

Kyoka, dressed in white accented by blue waves, perks up when Date walks behind her and hands her a stick of cotton candy. Her expression dips into a scowl when he ruffles her hair as he passes, but that too quickly fades - she takes a bite of the cotton candy, and her eyes light up again.

Mio is wearing deep, royal blue, with gold like a sunrise wrapped around her waist. She nods at Date when he flops down, settling in next to Eiji with a groan, and offers Shizue one of those faint Mio-smiles.

“Hey,” Shizue greets in turn, and nods at Kyoka - and at Eiji, who wears his checkered gray yukata as if it were a jacket, over the t-shirt and jeans he usually wears to work. He grins at Shizue when he sees the question in her eyes.

“Mio just says we needed to wear the yukata she picked out for us,” he says. “She never said _how_ we had to wear them.”

Kyoka sighs, long suffering. Mio’s expression doesn’t twitch, but Shizue can tell she wants to roll her eyes. She’d probably never admit it, but at this point, Shizue’s nearly certain that most of Mio’s stoicness is just that she likes to fuck with people.

“Damn,” Date says, after a moment of thought. “Wish I’d thought of that.”

“Like I would have let you wriggle your way out of it like that,” Shizue says, and switches her attention to Mio. “I forgot to ask earlier; is Pewter coming?” Date makes a face. He still hasn’t fully forgiven Pewter for his car.

Mio shakes her head, _no._ “I asked,” she says, “he said no.” She doesn’t elaborate, so Shizue nudges her.

“Did he say why?”

Mio shrugs. “I didn’t ask. He’d already said no.” There’s a slight curl to her lips as she says this, almost unnoticeable in the hazy sunset light, and Shizue narrows her eyes. She’s totally fucking with her.

“Bit of a loner, isn’t he?” Eiji muses, and leans back next to Date, reclining on his elbows. “Weird guy.”

“Don’t stain the yukata,” Kyoka says anxiously, staring at the grass around them. “The blanket is down for a reason, Eiji!”

He rolls his eyes and waves her off. The conversation drifts away from Pewter, and from ABIS in general, switching into lighter topics as the mood of the evening gets the better of all of them. At some point, Mio pulls a thermos out of her bag, and pours them all some fragrant sweet tea. It’s still warm, when Shizue sips at it.

“So, when are the fireworks meant to start?” At some point, Date had given up on sitting, and was now laid out on the grass beside the blanket, arms behind his head, eyes closed.

“Soon, I think!” Kyoka says. She’d finished her cotton candy ages ago, but she’s still fiddling with the stick. “They’re probably just waiting for full dark.”

It’s nearly time, then - the sun has finally disappeared beneath the horizon completely, and the rich navy of the sky is quickly bleeding out to a deeper black. Eiji nudges Date.

“Oi,” he says, and grins. “Get up, you don’t want to miss this.”

Date grumbles, but moves, and groans as he drags himself back up to sit on the blanket. 

“That’s what you get for laying on the floor,” Shizue says primly, and he scowls at her.

“Oh!” Kyoka scrambles for her phone. “I wanted to film it - ”

“No need,” Mio says. “I brought a camera.” She hands it over to Kyoka before the girl asks, and Kyoka lights up with the widest smile Shizue thinks she’s ever seen from her.

“Thanks, Mio!”

Eiji is watching the exchange with mild amusement playing across his face, but Date’s attention is focused upwards, at the sky. Shizue’s watching him watch for fireworks when said fireworks begin.

Red, purple, green and gold - colours bloom to life above them and scatter across the sky. The intermittent light plays with the shadows it casts on all their faces - in briefly lit glimpses, between the flashes, Shizue doesn’t watch the sky. She watches her psyncers: Mio, smiling as she thinks no one is paying attention to her; Kyoka, focus in her eyes as she angles the camera, joy plain in her face; Eiji, grin as wide as ever but something nostalgic lingering behind it -

\- and Date, who Shizue can’t get a read on at all.

He’s not...emotionless, as he watches the fireworks show. There’s a faint curve to his lips, but his eyes are distant. He’s somewhere else, somewhere that isn’t this tiny blanket with five people crammed onto it.

So wrapped up in watching Date, and trying not to feel worry, Shizue doesn’t actually end up watching the fireworks show herself. The last round is lit up, louder and brighter than the ones before, and when the crackling colours finally die away, she can only judge Date expression by the light of the stars and the festival lanterns.

Like the fireworks dying broke him out of whatever reverie he’d been stuck in, he seems to sense Shizue’s eyes on him at that moment, because he looks up and meets her gaze head on before she can look away.

She can’t help it. She flinches, and glances down. Before tearing her attention away from him to - anything else, she thinks… she thinks she sees confusion in his eyes.

“Mio!” She says, forcefully bright. “Got any plans after this?”

Mio raises a brow at her, eyes flicking between Shizue and Date - even if Eiji and Kyoka hadn’t, she’d clearly picked up whatever weird vibes they were giving off - but she thankfully keeps her quiet. “I was going to go home,” she says. “Do _you_ have plans?”

Shizue winks. “Want to take me home with you?”

“Not particularly,” Mio says dryly, “but I would not mind some company for a while longer, if that is all you are offering.”

“Nice,” Shizue says, and doesn’t have to force the smile. She looks over to Eiji, and tries not to stare at Date next to him when she does. “What about you? Got any plans?”

“Date and I are going out drinking,” he says, and his permanent grin switches gears to something Shizue would almost call _evil_ when he switches his attention to Kyoka. “You’re coming with us, right?” He asks.

Kyoka all but squeaks in terror. _“Me?”_

“Yeah, you, pipsqueak,” he says. “I mean, I get that you look like you’re still in highschool, but that’s just because you’re short. You _can_ drink, can’t you?”

“She’s only about a month younger than me,” Date comments. Kyoka squeaks again.

Eiji’s grin dips into something approaching a frown. “I mean, you don’t have to drink if you don’t want to,” he says, “but wouldn’t it be fun to come hang with us for a little longer?”

“We won’t go too crazy,” Date promises. “We still have work tomorrow, after all.”

Eiji makes a face like _don’t remind me,_ but Kyoka seems reassured, a little. Slowly, she nods. “Okay,” she says. “I’ll go out with you guys. Just for a little bit.”

Eiji lets out a whooping cheer, and tugs her under one arm - he’s already got Date trapped on his other side.

“Oh - Mio!” Kyoka speaks up before she’s dragged away. “Your camera - ”

“I can collect it from you tomorrow,” Mio says. And smiles. They all freeze. “Do _not_ break it.”

Kyoka’s face is deathly pale. “I won’t,” she whispers, and seems all too willing to let Eiji drag her away.

They’re gone in seconds.

“Ah,” Mio says. “Youth.”

Shizue snorts. “You’re barely even thirty.”

Mio shrugs. “Age is in how you carry yourself,” she says. “They’re children.”

Well, Shizue can’t deny that. Grinning, she offers her arm to Mio. 

Mio shakes her head, but takes it. “Where are we going?”

“I thought a restaurant somewhere around here would be nice,” Shizue hums. “Get some dinner, and then - ” a wink “ - go back to your place?”

Mio sighs. “Before that,” she says, “what was that? Between you and Date.”

Shizue tenses, and then forces herself to relax. “I don’t know,” she says, mostly truthful.

Mio’s narrowed gaze rests on her for just long enough to have her really, truly sweating. “Hmm,” she says. “You have a history, don’t you? The two of you.”

Shizue hesitates. “Well… kind of,” she admits. “But not really, at the same time.”

“Enlightening,” Mio says. “I don’t suppose Date knows about this?”

“Date doesn’t know about anything.”

For a long moment, Mio considers her. “I get the feeling,” she says carefully, “that you don’t really want to be talking about this.”

Throat tight when she swallows, Shizue nods.

“Okay, then,” Mio murmurs, and her arm unlinks from Shizue’s to slide down and take her hand. She squeezes it, as if to comfort. “I’m in the mood for something foreign,” she says, in a tone that’s conversational, for her. “Does that sound good to you?”

Shizue grasps for the subject change eagerly, if clumsily. “It sounds great,” she says. “Perfect, even.”

They wander off together to find food, in silence. It isn’t awkward. Mio’s hand is warm.

All in all, the festival wasn’t quite the fun outing Shizue had quietly hoped it would be.

But hey - at least the company was amazing.

-x-

Shizue wakes up early the next morning. For a minute she disoriented, but then two thoughts hit her at once:

She isn’t in her apartment.

This, thankfully, isn’t Mio’s bed.

“It’s my couch,” Mio says, leaning over the back of it, and Shizue lets out a yelp as she nearly rolls right off of it onto the floor. “Sorry,” Mio says, not looking very apologetic. “I made coffee.” She offers Shizue a mug.

With a stretch and a crack that travels down her spine, Shizue muffles a yawn and takes the mug out of Mio’s hand. “How’d you know what I was thinking?”

“I could see it on your face. You’re an easy read, Kuranushi.” She smirks. “Plus, you were joking last night about how terrible it would be if you woke up in my bed. I considered moving you there after I woke up, since you were dead to the world, but as amusing as it would have been to see your reaction, it seemed maybe a little cruel.”

“Gee, thanks,” Shizue says dryly. She presses a hand to her aching head. “God, what did we _do_ last night?”

“Wine,” Mio says, “and a lot of it.”

 _“You_ seem fine.”

“I know how to pace myself.” She pauses. “I’ve also been up for hours. I’ve eaten. Are you hungry?”

Shizue considers herself. “I could eat,” she says. “Toast, maybe.”

“I’ll make you some. Take a moment to wake up.” Mio’s hand on her shoulder, gently squeezing, and then she’s gone. Shizue can hear her moving in the kitchen.

She swigs her coffee - slightly more bitter than she’d usually take it, but she’s not rude enough to go bitching to Mio about her hospitality. While she sits, she digs around the couch for her phone - finds it underneath one cushion, because furniture is evil.

A message from Aiba tells her that Date stayed out last night - he probably crashed at Eiji’s. That’s relieving, in a way, because it means he won’t be questioning _her_ about where she was all night. Not that anything had happened, and not that she thought Date would be spreading it around regardless if anything _had_ \- but Mio is a good friend, and a good worker, and Shizue doesn’t want to risk fucking up either of their careers over a drunken night or gossip.

> tell him i’ll see him at work
> 
> Affirmative, Boss.

Mio brings her toast out not five minutes later. It’s perfect, with an even spread of jam and butter.

“You’re incredible,” Shizue tells her.

Mio smiles. “Oh, I know.”

-x-

Date’s birthday passes at the end of summer with little fanfare. Shizue gets him a god awful turtleneck, since he likes them so much, now. The other psyncers all pitch in and get him a cake. They take him out to celebrate, too - they probably have fun, but Shizue hadn’t gone with. She hadn’t been in the mood; Kaname Date may have been celebrating his twenty-fifth birthday, but today Hayato Yagyu would have been thirty-seven.

Best not to think about it, so she doesn’t.

A golden summer bleeds into a chilly autumn. It’ll be a harsh winter, this year. Again.

-x-

Autumn is a period of quiet for Shizue - not just in ABIS, though that’s always nice - but at home, too. Date’s rarely around. There’s a part of her that worries, but he’s a big boy, and she doesn’t own him. He can go out if he wants.

There’s a part of her that’s hurt and lonely, and well - that part is harder to reason with. Logic doesn’t help with _feelings._

Mio tells her that she needs to branch out more and find friends outside of ABIS. Mio is probably right. Shizue doesn’t know how to tell her she made her career her life the moment she hit twenty and has been subsiding on shallow socialisation ever since.

It occurs to her that Pewter probably has more genuine friends than she does. That’s actually incredibly depressing, considering he all but lives out of his lab.

“You’re sad, lately,” Date comments, one night when they’re both home, collapsed onto the couch next to each other, eating out of take-out boxes. He’s weirdly skilled with his chopsticks - there’s so much precision to each movement, he never drops so much as a crumb. “Did something happen?”

Called out, Shizue shrugs. She’s glad the food gives her an excuse not to look at him. “Just that time of year, I guess.”

She can feel his gaze rest on her, weighty and considering. “You wanna talk about it?”

Shizue sighs. “Not really,” she says. “We’re… an anniversary is coming up. Not a fun one.”

“A death?”

Her breath hitches. “Yeah,” she says. _Of a sort._

For a moment, he’s silent. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he says quietly.

Shizue’s eyes _burn._ “Thanks,” she says. _I am, too._

-x-

It all comes to a head in November. All things in Shizue’s life do, it seems.

After months of getting her equilibrium back, of slowly adjusting to the new normal, Kaname Date stands before her, jaw set and expression firm, gaze determined. There’s an uncertainty to his stance as he rocks back on his heels, but he isn’t retreating. 

Shizue kinds of wants to, though. She does.

“I want to move out,” Kaname Date says.

_He’s a big boy. You don’t own him._

“Okay,” Shizue says with a smile. “Let’s find you somewhere nice.”

(This isn’t a loss -

\- but it sure feels like one.)


End file.
